AGO 


NOVISSIMA 
VERBA— 1920 


NOVISSIMA  VERBA: 

LAST  WORDS 

1920 


BY 


FREDERIC   HARRISON 

D.C.L.,  LITT.D.,  LL.D. 


NEW  YORK 
HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


PR 
<4H 
Hf 


first      published     in     1921 


(All  rights  reserved) 


UNIVERSITY  OF  SOUTHERN  CALIFORNIA  LIBRAS 


TO 

THE  EARL  OF  ROSEBERY 
K.G.  &c.  &c. 

1889—1921 


PREFATORY 

These  Notes  on  events  and  books  of  the  day  were 
published  in  the  "Fortnightly  Review"  month  by 
month  during  the  year  1920.  It  was  not  found  neces- 
sary to  make  any  addition,  excision,  or  qualification 
to  comments  which,  by  the  courtesy  of  the 
"  Review,"  are  now  issued  as  they  appeared  at  the 
time.  After  very  careful  consideration,  I  offer  these 
essays  as  my  deliberate  judgment  on  urgent  problems 
of  State,  still  far  from  solution  or  settlement. 

F.  H. 

Bath,  October,  1921. 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAQE 

I  -  9 

II  -  22 

III  -  -  40 

iv  -  56 

v  -  68 

vi  -  83 

VH  -  99 

vm  -  118 

IX  -  -                                                                       135 

X  -  153 

Xi  -  -                                                                       169 

XII 187 


JANUARY 

-    1920    - 


1TAKE  up  again  my  pen  to  record  the  occasional 
Thoughts  which  strike  a  very  old  observer  of 
current  events  in  the  world  of  change  and  storm 
in  which  we  live.  When  I  noted  them  in  the  last  year 
of  the  great  war  (Obiter  Scripta,  Chapman  and  Hall, 
1919)  the  dominant  fact  was  that  "  a  war  of  Classes 
was  about  to  supersede  the  war  of  Nations."  The 
Russian  Revolution  had  sent  a  thrill  of  expectation 
through  the  democracy  of  the  human  race.  There 
was  coming  on,  I  said,  "  a  new  Social  Order  as  deep 
and  as  wide  as  any  in  the  history  of  civilisation."  Two 
years  have  passed.  And  all  these  things  seem  to  have 
increased  tenfold.  Russian  revolution  has  been  fol- 
lowed by  that  of  Germany  and  of  Austria.  King- 
doms, Constitutions,  Churches,  peoples  are  in  chaos. 
Above  all,  the  relations  of  the  great  and  the  small 
nations,  of  Capital  and  of  Labour,  of  trade  and  taxa- 
tion, of  the  State  and  the  citizen,  seem  about  to  con- 
vulse civilisation. 


I  never  joined  the  early  enthusiasm  for  a  League  of 
Nations.    It  seemed  to  me  to  be  premature — impos- 


10  NOVISSIMA  VERSA 

sible  in  the  actual  moral  conditions  of  nations.  In 
May,  1918,  I  wrote  thus  :  "  A  general  and  peaceful 
League  of  Nations  will  never  be  formed  until  the  con- 
version of  mankind  to  a  purer  moral  and  religious 
form  of  life."  It  was  the  dream  of  an  eloquent  pro- 
fessor who  roused  grand  hopes  in  the  people — into 
which  practical  statesmen  were  drawn  and  almost 
forced  to  take  part.  In  the  golden  age  of  Democracy 
the  cool  sense  of  political  wisdom  is  swept  away. 
Could  nations  work  in  harmony  whilst  old  hatreds, 
ambitions,  fears,  jealousies,  and  greeds  remained  un- 
tamed? So  far  from  curing  them,  the  war  had  vastly 
stimulated  them.  When,  after  an  orgy  of  glorifica- 
tion, amiabilities,  and  rhetoric,  the  Nations  at  last 
met  in  conference  in  Paris,  the  old  passions  and 
desires  were  bent  on  mastery. 


The  world  was  kept  in  the  dark  whilst  for  six 
months  the  so-called  deliberations  went  on.  They 
were  really  disputes^  changes,  compromises,  rather 
than  deliberations.  The  grandiose  Covenant  of  the 
President  with  his  Fourteen  Points  was  an  academic 
programme  with  no  statesmanship  of  concrete  know- 
ledge and  foresight  behind  it.  As  applied  to  the  real 
facts  of  the  world,  it  needed  incessant  modification, 
reservations,  exceptions,  wherein  the  splendid 
enthusiasm  of  Mr.  Wilson  was  continually  baffled  by 
diplomatists,  who  seemed  to  be  using  a  tongue  that 
he  hardly  understood.  The  statesmen  and  the  soldiers 
of  France  insisted  on  strategic  guarantees ;  Britain 


LAST  WORDS  11 

was  bound  to  claim  separate  membership  for  her 
Dominions,  and  had  to  keep  Ireland,  Egypt,  Syria, 
and  India  out  of  the  self-determination  formula ;  Italy 
was  keen  for  the  old  Hun  doctrine  of  grab ;  Japan 
was  out  for  Pacific  islands  and  a  good  slice  of  China. 
In  the  midst  of  these  very  human  Powers  the  Presi- 
dent stood  for  international  Brotherhood.  He  had  a 
hard  time  of  it ! 


Clearly  the  only  real  statesman  there  was  our  Prime 
Minister.  His  energy,  rapid  intelligence,  versatility, 
sense  of  realities,  patience,  self-command,  and  de- 
bating power  over  and  over  again  saved  the  situation 
and  dominated  the  Conference.  He  made  the  Presi- 
dent see  the  hard  facts  that  stood  before  his  visions. 
He  made  the  ' '  Tiger ' '  feel  that  soldiers  must  not 
override  political  necessities.  He  withstood  Italian 
bandits  and  Polish,  Roumanian,  and  Hungarian 
ambition.  His  obvious  ignorance  of  the  old  Balance 
of  Power,  and  his  fortunate  innocence  of  diplomatic 
vice  made  him  the  proper  moderator  of  a  new  Europe 
and  the  childhood  of  young  nations.  These  gifts 
made  him  as  completely  master  of  the  Conference  as 
Bismarck  ever  was  at  Berlin.  It  is  a  misfortune  that 
Mr.  Lloyd  George  is  impulsive,  almost  too  much  the 
opportunist,  the  too- willing  servant  of  the  democracy 
he  loves  and  from  which  he  rose.  Withal,  he  is  the 
new  leader  of  a  new  time. 


12  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

Mr.  Wilson  made  fatal  mistakes  which  stamp  him 
as  a  pretentious  amateur  in  State-craft.  He  came 
over  with  nothing  but  a  vague  Utopia,  of  which  he 
had  not  worked  out  either  the  details  or  the  obstacles. 
Next,  he  refused  to  accept  the  co-operation  of  ex- 
perienced men  opposed  to  him  in  party,  and  even  of 
influential  men  of  his  own  party.  He  affected  to  act 
as  an  autocrat ;  and  Europe  was  long  ready  to  accept 
him  as  Dictator.  He  absented  himself  from  his 
proper  duties  and  his  own  people,  so  that  for  months 
he  saw  his  authority  to  speak  for  America  passing 
away  into  bitter  opposition  and  distrust.  He  dragged 
the  unwieldy  Covenant  into  the  Treaty,  wasting 
months  when  the  enemy  were  regaining  their  co- 
hesion, and  almost  risked  thereby  a  renewal  of  the 
war.  Finally,  in  the  Conference,  his  ignorance  of 
the  European  imbroglio  and  his  constant  change  of 
plan  reduced  the  action  of  the  Powers  to  apathy,  in- 
consistencies, procrastination,  and  discredit. 


I  am  not  judging  Woodrow  Wilson  as  an  Ameri- 
can statesman.  He  is  clearly  one  of  the  noblest 
enthusiasts  in  the  public  Leaders  of  the  world.  His 
view  of  the  dominant  authority  of  a  President  of  the 
Republic  is  entirely  right ;  and  his  proud  insistence 
on  unity  of  control  is  a  true  gospel  in  these  days  of 
anarchic  inconstancy  and  servility  to  every  gust  of 
opinion.  As  an  American  President  he  is  a  worthy 
successor  of  Washington,  and  for  the  simpler  and 
localised  problems  of  the  Republic  he  was  almost  an 


LAST  WORDS  13 

ideal  Chief  Executive.  But  when  he  came  to  recast 
European  civilisation,  he  was  the  Professor,  the 
essayist,  the  idealist  he  ever  was ;  and  he  undertook  a 
task  for  which  he  had  no  experience,  and  in  which  he 
was  at  fault.  He  is  a  great  orator,  but  no  debater  :  a 
great  moralist,  preacher,  inspirer — but,  like  Demos- 
thenes, Cicero,  or  Burke,  he  failed  when  he  brought 
his  idealism  to  compose  the  world  after  an  awful  war 
and  a  yet  more  sinister  revolution.  Idealists  ruin 
things  when  they  meddle  with  European  convulsions, 
as  the  Tsar  Alexander,  Joseph  II.,  and  many  more 
have  found.  Wilson  has  gone  far  to  ruin  Europe. 
****** 

At  the  moment  of  the  Armistice  the  victorious 
Powers  were  paramount  masters,  and  the  Republic 
and  its  President  were  acknowledged  as  their  Head. 
They  could  have  made — they  ought  to  have  made — a 
conclusive  Peace  with  the  enemy  in  November,  or  at 
latest  in  December.  Instead  of  that,  they  wasted  two 
months  in  parades,  banquets,  oratory,  and  progresses 
in  which  Wilson  figured  as  the  Grand  Pacificator. 
In  coming  to  Europe  he  was  bound  to  show  that  he 
had  united  all  parties  at  home,  as  did  Lloyd  George, 
and  that  he  fully  represented  the  Republic.  We  took 
his  word  for  it — till  the  crash  came,  like  an  aeroplane 
when  the  pilot  has  lost  control.  The  tragedy  was 
the  result  of  over-weening  arrogance  and  practical 
impotence  in  great  statesmanship. 

****** 

In  the  end  of  1918  the  one  thing  urgent  was  Peace. 
Instead  of  making  peace,  Wilson  led  the  nations  and 


14  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

their  rulers  to  discuss  his  vague  scheme  of  a  Pacific 
League,  as  if  the  Conference  were  an  International 
Congress  of  Jurists.  He  went  about  trying  to  indoc- 
trinate the  public  of  Europe  with  the  Idealism  of 
Peace  much  as  in  America  he  sought  to  indoctrinate 
the  citizens  with  the  Idealism,  first  of  Neutrality  and 
then  of  War  to  save  Democracy.  If  there  is  one 
lesson  in  strategy  the  war  has  taught,  it  is  the  neces- 
sity of  suddenness,  of  rapidity,  of  unity,  of  secrecy — 
the  supreme  power  of  Napoleon,  Frederick  the  Great, 
Cromwell,  and  Foch.  But,  as  dominated  by  Wilson, 
the  lessons  of  peace  learned  by  the  Conferences  were 
— dilatory  discussion,  change  of  plan,  impracticable 
promises,  postponed  decisions.  Europe,  America, 
the  world  would  have  hailed  a  definite  peace  made  in 
1918.  Wilson  forced  on  us  a  truly  idealist  Covenant, 
which  could  not  get  to  work  until  after  1920 — if  it 
can  ever  work  then.  The  Paris  Conference  dragged 
on  like  that  of  Vienna — until  Napoleon  left  Elba. 
The  opponents  in  the  Senate  have  a  very  strong  case 
against  the  Covenant :  a  practical  Peace  they  would 
have  willingly  accepted.  Its  danger  to  us  all  is 
evident — new  wars,  unrest,  impossible  tasks,  and  dis- 
appointment— if  not  despair — lurk  in  every  class. 
If,  by  the  double  tragedy  of  Wilson's  ignorance, 
obstinacy,  presumption,  and  his  physical  collapse,  the 
League  of  Nations  is  not  yet  dead,  it  is  postponed  at 
least  for  months — whilst  chaos  is  at  hand,  and  the  vast 
burden  of  the  League  of  Nations  is  thrown  on  Eng- 
land and  France. 

****** 


LAST  WORDS  15 

The  war,  and  many  documents,  books  and  revela- 
tions of  our  time,  have  deeply  changed  the  estimate 
of  Frederick  the  Great  which  Carlyle  in  the  'sixties 
sought  to  establish.  The  King,  as  we  see  now,  gave 
a  great  development  to,  though  he  was  not  at  all  the 
author  of,  Prussian  militarism  that  has  brought  Euro- 
pean civilisation  so  near  to  ruin.  But,  though 
Frederick  enlarged  the  system  he  inherited,  he  is  not 
responsible  for  the  monstrous  orgy  of  public  crimes 
which  his  successors  brought  upon  the  world.  One  of 
the  latest  studies  of  the  Prussian  King  is  the  Life  by 
Norwood  Young  (Constable  and  Co.,  8vo.,  1919). 
This  book,  with  all  its  industry  and  vigorous  reason- 
ing, is  rather  an  indictment  than  an  impartial  history. 
Frederick  was  neither  a  blunderer,  a  poltroon,  nor  a 
monster — but  a  consummate  master  of  the  evil  craft 
in  which  he  and  his  contemporaries  were  steeped. 
Mr.  Young  made  the  same  error  as  Carlyle — for  his 
Life  of  Frederick  deals  solely  with  his  wars.  The 
three  wars  occupied  only  ten  of  the  forty-six  years 
of  his  reign.  Of  the  thirty-six  years  of  peace  in  which 
he  reorganised  Prussia  and  raised  it  to  be  the  best- 
governed  State  of  the  eighteenth  century,  Carlyle  told 
us  not  much.  Mr.  Young  tells  us  almost  nothing. 


The  estimates  of  George  Eliot  called  out  by  her 
centenary  support,  I  think,  what  I  have  said  in  more 
than  one  review  of  her  work  that  her  reputation  will 
surely,  but  slowly,  revive  from  the  depreciation  into 
which  younger  generations,  a  new  atmosphere,  and  a 


16  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

more  hustling  life  has  cast  it  down  of  late.  Again, 
sound  criticism  agrees  with  me  in  holding  that  her 
supreme  gifts  are  in  her  earlier,  lesser,  and  rural 
romances,  not  in  the  greater  stories  of  her  famous 
age.  Though  Romola  is  artificial,  Middlemarch  over- 
crowded with  banalities,  and  Daniel  Deronda  un- 
pleasant, her  work  as  a  whole  will  appeal  to  a  cultured 
and  serious  audience  as  having  a  peculiar  and  noble 
form  of  romance.  As  do  Milton  and  Wordsworth, 
she  will  retain  her  own  body  of  readers,  more  select 
than  numerous.  And  this  will  be  a  permanent  light 
in  English  literature. 

****** 

I  am  deeply  interested  in  the  Outspoken  Essays  of 
the  Dean  of  St.  Paul's  (Longmans,  1919).  The  new 
study  of  Our  Present  Discontents  is  indeed  an  inde- 
pendent survey  of  our  chaotic  condition  by  one  who 
is  at  once  a  religious  reformer  and  a  social  philosopher. 
It  is  not  for  me  to  analyse  the  essays  on  St.  Paul,  the 
Churches  of  Rome  and  of  England,  Cardinal  New- 
man, Dr.  Gore,  and  personal  survival.  But  the  Dean's 
unsparing  review  of  current  Democracy,  Patriotism, 
Birth-rate,  the  Future  of  our  Race,  must  command 
attention  and  rebuke  the  popular  optimism  of  poli- 
ticians and  journalists  who  live  by  pleasing  con- 
stituents and  readers.  The  motto  of  this  book,  from 
Euripides,  is — axXtjp'  aXr^.  Much  of  it  is,  indeed,  "  a 
hard  saying."  In  such  times  as  ours,  what  we  want 
are  true  things,  however  hard.  It  is  the  only  chance 
of  life. 


LAST  WORDS  17 

It  is  a  hopeful  sign  to  find  a  popular  Prelate  of  our 
ancient  Church  attacking  with  resolute  vigour  and  in 
a  scientific  spirit  such  complex  social  problems  as 
Population,  the  statistics  of  birth  and  maternity,  the 
future  of  our  Race,  Emigration,  the  Empire, 
Patriotism  and  international  Brotherhood.  What 
popular  catchwords,  what  favourite  nostrums,  and 
mendacious  fallacies  are  cut  to  the  bone  by  the  Dean's 
masterly  use  of  the  logical  knife  !  Withal,  he  speaks 
as  a  priest  should,  his  scientific  knowledge  infused 
with  religion  as  well  as  with  morality.  There  is 
nothing  in  it  of  the  vagueness  of  the  popular  sermon, 
of  the  sentimentalism  of  the  philanthropist.  It  is  the 
voice  of  a  thinker  on  society  who  is  entirely  ' '  out- 
spoken," who  is  not  afraid  to  tell  truths  to  which  the 
ignorant  masses  are  blind,  and  which  the  experienced 
are  apt  to  conceal  or  disguise. 


The  most  terrible  of  his  forecasts  is  the  picture  he 
draws  of  the  future  of  the  English  race.  "  We  are 
witnessing  the  decline  of  the  industrial  revolution  of 
160  years  ago.  The  cancer  of  Industrialism  has  begun 
to  mortify,  and  the  end  is  in  sight "  (p.  101).  In 
some  200  years,  he  says,  the  vicious  Industrialism  in 
which  we  live  will  have  worked  out  its  own  exhaus- 
tion. The  reckless  waste  of  our  coal,  the  concen- 
trating life  in  unwholesome  cities,  and  the  ambition 
of  organised  Labour  to  get  more  in  material  value 
than  it  chooses  to  produce — will  force  our  impossible 
population  to  be  reduced  and  take  to  country  life  to 


18  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

grow  food.  It  is  a  dismal  forecast — depending  on 
the  condition — if  statesmen,  workmen,  and  capitalists 
all  continue  to  hold  by  their  present  habits  and  ideas. 
For  my  part,  I  think  200  years  rather  too  liberal  a 
limit  of  time. 


The  recent  revolution  in  our  Parliamentary  system 
has  delivered  over  Britain  and  the  Empire  to  millions 
of  men  and  women  who  are  utterly  ignorant  both  of 
economic  certainties  and  of  international  relations. 
These  millions  are  really  tame,  well-meaning,  poten- 
tial Bolshevists — if  the  essence  of  Bolshevism  is  the 
purpose  to  give  the  manual  labourers  the  sole  control 
of  all  labour  and  the  entire  enjoyment  of  the  product 
of  their  work.  To  this  Marxian  result  politicians, 
philanthropists,  and  social  reformers  combine  to  lead 
by  a  series  of  graduated  and  disguised  surrenders. 
They  promise,  compromise,  and  capitulate.  It  is  the 
"  bedside  manner  "  of  our  Ministers. 


I  would  not  say  that  mortification  has  begun,  and 
I  look  for  a  recovery  of  health  within  two  generations 
rather  than  200  years.  But  in  my  darker  hours  I  can 
see  a  vision  of  our  glorious  England  reduced,  after 
passing  through  long  and  cruel  sufferings,  to  be  forced 
to  grow  its  own  food,  to  live  again  in  pure  air  and  in 
touch  with  Nature,  and  without  the  rage  for  artificial 
enjoyments.  Our  beautiful,  but  very  moderate, 
island  would  be  more  like  Ireland,  or  even  like 


LAST  WORDS  19 

Holland  after  its  decline  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century.  Many  States  of  our  English  race  will  be 
prosperous  and  growing  in  many  parts  of  the  globe. 
In  the  meantime,  half  our  present  population  will 
enjoy  a  stationary  condition  of  health,  contentment, 
and  peace.  The  fate  of  the  other  half — is  silence. 


The  Dean,  as  I  have  said,  is  quite  as  much  a  re- 
former in  religious  as  in  social  organisation.  Indeed, 
the  larger  part  of  his  book  is  devoted  to  movements 
in  Churches,  Roman  and  Anglican,  and  to  the 
spiritual  problems  of  mysticism  and  immortality. 
With  these  I  have  no  business  to  deal.  But,  as  a 
Churchman,  Dean  Inge  is  quite  as  outspoken  as  he  is 
on  Socialism.  "  A  profound  reconstruction  is  de- 
manded," he  says.  "The  new  type  of  Christianity 
will  be  more  Christian  than  the  old,  because  it  will 
be  more  moral  "  (p.  135,  essay  on  Bishop  Gore  and 
the  Church  of  England).  We  all  want  to  see  in  detail 
the  Dean's  new  type  of  Christianity. 

I  have  enjoyed  the  essay  on  the  Greek  Anthology 
in  Sir  Edward  Cook's  new  (and,  alas !  his  last)  book, 
More  Literary  Recreations  (Macmillan,  1919) — a  very 
pleasant  book  of  literary  criticism,  which  challenges 
thought  even  if  we  do  not  accept  all  its  verdicts.  His 
account  of  these  exquisite  short  poems,  and  of  the 
incessant  attempts  to  translate  them,  occupies  more 
than  a  third  of  the  book.  These  pages,  with  about 
100  pages  on  Classical  quotations  and  Pliny's  Letters, 
make  delightful  reading.  Would  that  our  young 


20  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

poets  of  to-day  would  study  these  epigrams  and 
mottoes — their  clarity,  simplicity,  restraint,  pathos. 
Not  a  word  is  wasted  in  needless  epithets,  not  a  line 
but  has  a  plain  thought,  startling  in  its  brevity,  and 
yet  haunting  the  memory  by  its  grace.  The  history 
of  this  wonderful  collection  is  a  key  to  the  Greek 
genius — by  the  long  ages  over  which  it  lived,  and 
grew,  the  various  lands  and  the  diverse  types  of  cul- 
ture in  which  it  flourished. 


The  non-scientific  public  is  quite  right  in  taking  a 
lively  interest  in  Professor  Einstein's  new  theory  of 
Space,  but  quite  wrong  if  they  ask  to  have  the  theory 
made  plain  to  them.  In  detail,  it  can  only  be  made 
intelligible  to  those  who  are  versed  in  the  higher 
mathematics,  and  indeed  the  very  recent  learning 
inter  apices  of  the  highest  mathematics.  They  who 
carefully  study  all  that  has  been  published  by  Pro- 
fessor Eddington,  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  Dr.  Crommelin, 
Professor  Wildon  Carr,  and  others  in  the  Times,  may 
see  three  things  :  (1)  that  a  profound  shock  has  been 
given  to  current  ideas  about  Space,  Time,  and  all 
absolute  theories  about  the  Universe ;  (2)  that  for 
practical  purposes  our  ordinary  geometry  and 
astronomy  need  hardly  any  correction ;  (3)  that  they 
who  desire  to  follow  out  Professor  Einstein's  vast, 
subtle,  and  intricate  calculations  must  steep  them- 
selves in  the  very  recent  geometry  of  four  dimensions 
and  the  like  mysterious  novelties. 


LAST  WORDS  21 

For  myself,  making  no  pretension  to  such  learning, 
I  am  interested  only  in  the  signal  reaction  of  the  new 
theory  on  the  general  philosophy  of  the  Relative.  All 
the  more  so,  because  exactly  fifty  years  ago  I  wrote 
an  essay  to  show  that  all  absolute  ideas  about  Space, 
Time,  the  Universe,  or  the  geometric  and  physical 
conditions  of  the  world  outside  the  range  of  our  imme- 
diate observations  are  futile.  "  We  have  not,  and 
cannot  have,  any  proof  that  our  laws  of  nature  and  of 
things  exist  outside  of  the  human  mind  in  the  mode 
in  which  we  conceive  them."  "Does  the  Infinite 
Universe  through  Space  conform  to  the  modes  of 
mind  of  the  human  mites  which  inhabit  this  planetary 
speck? ';  The  objective  order  of  the  Universe,  I 
wrote,  may  be  utterly  different  from  our  conceptions 
of  it :  even  Space,  Time,  ^Ether,  Gravitation  are  only 
our  human  ideas,  the  best  explanation  of  our  observa- 
tions we  have  yet  given.  It  is  possible  they  are  only 
our  dreams.  For  myself,  the  Einstein  "revolution 
in  science  "  has  given  me  no  shock.  It  only  falls  in 
with  the  philosophy  of  Relativity  which  I  have 
preached  all  my  life. 


FEBRUARY 

1920 

II 

PEACE  is  made — by  us  with  some  of  our 
enemies ! — peace  is  not  made  by  the  biggest 
and  most  powerful  of  our  comrades  in  war. 
Peace  is  made — but  not  rest.  Peace  opens  a  vast 
array  of  most  arduous  and  menacing  problems.  Our 
condition  seems  more  full  of  toil  and  peril  than  it 
was  in  the  autumn  of  1918.  In  the  first  place,  the  so- 
called  Treaty  of  Peace  and  its  monstrous  Covenant 
are  impossible,  ruinous,  suicidal — and  must  at  once 
be  recast.  To  modify  it  in  detail  is  not  enough.  It 
must  be  recast,  and  that  in  the  absence  of  its  principal 
author.  And  then,  inextricably  entangled  in  the 
Treaty  and  the  Covenant,  tremendous  obligations  lie 
on  us  to  reconstruct  nations  in  Europe  and  in  Asia. 
At  the  same  time,  our  own  Parliamentary  system  is 
in  dissolution  within  and  without ;  and  Labour  prob- 
lems are  at  least  as  numerous,  as  urgent,  and  as  per- 
plexing as  they  ever  before  have  been.  On  Britain 
there  lies  a  task  as  heavy  as  any  in  its  long,  glorious 

history. 

**#•**•* 


22 


LAST  WORDS  23 

The  withdrawal  of  the  American  Republic  from 
the  cause  of  the  Allies — even  if  it  be  not  final  but 
temporary — has  reduced  Europe  to  a  series  of 
dilemmas.  The  Treaty  of  Peace  hangs  on  the 
Covenant ;  the  Covenant  hangs  on  an  effective 
League  of  Nations ;  the  operative  League  of  Nations 
was  designed  to  meet  the  action  of  Mr.  Wilson,  who 
is  designated  to  summon  the  Sessions,  as  also  he  was 
the  official  and  irremovable  President  of  the  United 
States.  In  this  colossal  stale-mate  of  all  the  Great 
Powers  little  really  permanent  can  be  settled.  Their 
vast  schemes  of  reconstruction  are  still  hardly  more 
than  drafts  and  programmes.  These  vast  schemes 
were  feasible  only  by  the  enormous  forces  and  the 
paramount  authority  which  they  held  collectively  at 
the  Armistice.  In  November,  1918,  they  had  five 
millions  of  men  in  arms  flushed  with  victory,  and 
nothing  but  desperate  rabbles  to  resist  them.  They 
could  have  imposed  their  terms  on  all  Europe.  Four- 
teen months  have  passed.  The  people  clamoured  to 
be  demobilised ;  the  five  millions  are  now  hardly  one 
million.  For  a  year  the  Powers  have  wrangled  and 
intrigued  against  each  other.  Their  credit  is  gone ; 
they  are  defied,  insulted,  and  tricked ;  their  own 
people  complain  and  threaten  them  at  home.  And 
the  only  one  of  the  Powers  which  was  not  exhausted 
and  ruined  will  have  no  more  to  do  with  them,  and 
refuses  to  share  in  the  awful  responsibilities  she  has 
drawn  on  them. 


24  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

For  the  moment  it  is  in  vain  to  hope  that  the 
American  people  will  soon  relent  and  bring  help,  in 
vain  to  call  upon  the  League  of  Nations.  As  well 
call  upon  Baal.  Until  the  League  is  a  solid,  united, 
and  recognised  power,  with  international  authority, 
and  controlling  at  least  armies  of  a  million  or  more, 
perfectly  equipped,  they  can  do  nothing  except 
perorate  and  pass  more  orders.  They  have  not  one- 
tenth  of  the  force  and  the  prestige  they  possessed  in 
1918.  They  can  raise  no  new  armies,  no  more  Vic- 
tory Loans.  They  are  war- weary  and  almost  in- 
solvent. Whilst  they  talk  of  reorganising  the  Middle 
Europe,  settling  in  peace  the  Balkans,  removing  the 
Turkish  Power  from  Europe,  protecting  Armenia, 
Syria  and  Palestine,  reconstructing  Persia  and  Meso- 
potamia— do  they  realise  that  any  one  of  these  may 
mean  a  new  war?  Still  more,  do  they  realise  that  our 
new  masters,  twenty  millions  of  voters,  the  advancing 
party  of  labour,  will  vote  neither  men  nor  money  for 
war? 


The  key  to  the  Labour  problems  of  the  world  lies 
in  the  attitude  of  workmen  to  the  principles  as  well 
as  to  the  practice  of  the  Soviet  Government  of  Russia. 
None  but  the  more  violent  groups  of  Socialists  have 
anything  but  repudiation  of  the  ferocious  tyranny 
with  which  Lenin  and  Trotsky  are  trying  to  carry  out 
the  fundamental  doctrines  of  the  Marxian  creed. 
The  important  question  is — How  far  do  Socialists 
generally  hold  by  the  basis  of  the  Bolshevist  system — 


LAST  WORDS  25 

the  domination  of  society  by  the  manual  labourers, 
by  force,  if  and  when  possible  and  necessary?  Light 
may  be  thrown  on  this  by  studying  a  book  put  out  by 
the  Independent  Labour  Party  in  their  Library  and 
published  by  the  National  Labour  Press  of  Man- 
chester, London,  and  Leicester — The  Dictatorship 
of  the  Proletariat,  by  Paul  Kautsky,  now  translated 
by  H.  J.  Stenning.  Kautsky,  as  the  editor  very  truly 
says,  is  the  most  eminent  Socialist  writer  of  the  Con- 
tinent. An  Austrian  by  birth,  he  lived  in  Germany 
and  in  England,  has  worked  all  his  life  with  the 
Minority  Socialists,  edited  the  remains  of  Karl  Marx, 
and  in  1882  founded  the  Neue  Zeit. 


Karl  Kautsky  is  the  ablest  and  most  systematic  ex- 
ponent of  Socialism  of  the  Marxian  type,  of  which  he 
is,  with  some  differences,  the  legitimate  heir.  His 
book,  which  is  a  criticism  of  Russian  Bolshevism,  was 
published  just  before  the  Armistice  of  1918  in  Vienna. 
The  preface  to  the  English  translation,  whilst  admit- 
ting that  "  they  have  made  mistakes,"  that  the  Soviet 
Government  "  have  accomplished  wonderful  achieve- 
ments," warns  British  Socialists  of  the  difference 
between  the  conditions  of  Russia  and  those  in 
Western  countries,  "  between  what  may  be  expedient 
as  a  temporary  measure  and  what  is  best  for  stable 
conditions."  Kautsky 's  whole  argument,  which  is 
close  and  judicial,  is  that  the  dictatorship  of  the 
Soviets  is  not  democracy,  but  is  the  tyranny  of  a  sec- 
tion only  of  the  proletariat,  explained  and  perhaps 


26  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

justified  by  the  local  conditions  of  the  Russian  people, 
but  is  not  true  Socialism,  and  is  not  possible  in 
Western  nations  where  democracy  is  established. 
"Democracy  and  Dictatorship  are  irreconcilable," 
he  says,  "and  the  whole  proletariat  of  the  world  is 
attached  to  the  principle  of  general  democracy." 
Lenin's  dictatorship  is  not  democratic — and  "  Social- 
ism without  democracy  is  unthinkable." 


Karl  Kautsky  is  ready  to  hail  the  ascendancy  of 
Society  by  the  proletariat  and  their  control  of  the 
State,  if  it  be  secured  by  democracy  and  not  by  dic- 
tatorship. The  Russian  Revolution  "  has  for  the  first 
time  in  the  history  of  the  world  made  a  Socialist 
Party  the  rulers  of  a  great  Empire."  "  No  wonder 
that  the  proletarians  of  all  countries  have  hailed  Bol- 
shevism. The  reality  of  proletarian  rule  weighs 
heavier  in  the  scale  than  theoretical  considerations." 
But  the  error  of  Bolshevists  is  in  obtaining  rule  by  the 
wrong  methods — by  imposing  a  dictatorship  which 
denies  liberty  to  all,  defies  other  proletarians,  and 
does  not  include  peasants.  To  assume  that  these  dic- 
tatorial methods  are  applicable  to  Western  nations  is 
the  defiance  of  democracy  and  is  false  Marxism. 
Marx  always  thought  it  possible  that  in  England  and 
America  ' '  the  proletariat  might  peacefully  conquer 
political  power."  "  Confining  the  outlook  to  trade 
interests  narrows  the  mind,  and  this  is  one  of  the 
drawbacks  to  mere  Trade  Unionism."  "  Democracy 
signifies  rule  of  majority,  but  not  less  the  protection 


LAST  WORDS  27 

of  minorities."  Kautsky's  book  forms  a  manifesto  of 
rational  Socialism — which  is  this.  The  methods  of 
the  Soviets  in  Russia  are  wrong  :  their  ultimate  pur- 
pose is  right.  It  is  the  control  of  the  State  by  the 
manual  labourers  of  the  cities,  but  not  including  those 
who  till  the  soil. 


There  is  such  a  flux  of  occasional  poetry  in  crypto- 
grams— which  looks  very  like  poetry,  but  is  often  in 
harsh  discords  and  hard  to  understand — that  it  is  re- 
freshing to  come  upon  verses  which  have  the  true  ring 
of  melodious  phrase  and  clear  graceful  thought.  I 
notice  in  the  Spectator  of  January  10th  four  stanzas, 
signed  Evelyn  Grant-Duff,  which  seem  to  me  to  be 
the  genuine  thing  : — 

TO  A  KINGFISHER. 

A  splash,  a  dart,  a  gleam  of  blue, 
A  spray  of  jewels  rainbow  hue, 
Between  the  rushes  gray  and  bare, 
Sweet  little  sapphire  of  the  air. 

Thou  flashest  'gainst  the  Western  sky 
Where  the  once  lovely  colours  die, 
Their  sunset  death  and  eerie  mist 
Hangs  o'er  the  waters  thou  hast  kissed. 

Would  that  our  young  bards  would  give  us  some 
more  like  that. 


I  was  one  of  the  very  first  to  honour  the  genius  of 
Thomas   Hardy.      I   have   indeed   long   studied  his 


28  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

philosophic  insight  almost  more  than  his  romances  or 
his  poems.  In  both  there  is  the  substratum  and 
undertone  of  a  serious  thinker  on  human  life — albeit 
of  the  dismal  school  of  Lucretius.  Long  since  recog- 
nised as  the  accepted  doyen  in  the  art  of  romance, 
Thomas  Hardy  has  always  seemed  to  me  to  have  a 
high  poetic  imagination  that  no  one  since  Browning 
has  shown.  The  Dynasts  present  a  Miltonic  world- 
drama — such  as  rises  far  beyond  the  reach  of  Tenny- 
son, Swinburne,  or  any  contemporary  poet.  For 
years  past  we  Hardy  it  es  have  seen  in  the  reviews, 
magazines,  and  journals  short  poems  that  could  be 
instantly  recognised  as  his  without  any  signature  at 
all.  With  all  his  range  of  subject,  from  the  world 
around  and  Nature  before  us,  the  conception  and  the 
tone  were  always  his  own,  like  no  other  man's.  It 
was  therefore  with  peculiar  interest  that  I  took  up  the 
new  volume  of  Lyrics  (Macmillan  and  Co.,  1919). 


It  is  an  amazing  evidence  of  fertility,  even  in  mass 
and  variety  of  subject.  This  first  volume  of  Collected 
Poems  has  521  pages,  and  about  the  same  number  of 
separate  poems.  They  range  over  more  than  fifty 
years.  The  scene  is  mostly  Wessex,  of  which  every 
hill  and  dale,  every  moor  and  down,  village  and  farm, 
church  and  graveyard  (especially  the  graveyards),  in- 
spire thoughts.  What  Lakeland  was  to  Wordsworth, 
that,  as  we  all  know,  Wessex  is  to  Thomas  Hardy. 
If  the  field  of  vision  is  limited  to  two  or  three  counties 
in  South- West  England,  the  immediate  subject  is  of 


LAST  WORDS  29 

almost  infinite  variety — from  the  vault  of  heaven  and 
ideal  space  to  the  smallest  flower,  bird,  tree,  or  pond, 
the  humblest  byre,  sheepfold,  doorstep,  or  head- 
stone. We,  who  have  looked  out  for  these  occasional 
lyrics  in  magazines,  knew  how,  as  Wordsworth  says, 
the  meanest  flower  that  blows  touches  the  poet's 
heart.  Burns,  Wordsworth,  Tennyson,  saw  unutter- 
able meaning  in  the  simplest  things.  So  too,  in  a  rare 
sense,  does  Thomas  Hardy.  This  volume  is  one  long 
hymn  to  the  poetry  seen  by  him  in  his  native  home. 


It  is  not  on  the  poetic  beauty  of  these  lyrics  that  I 
wish  to  dwell ;  nor  shall  my  reverence  for  the  poet's 
genius  and  my  love  for  an  old  friend  prevent  me  from 
speaking  my  whole  mind.  We  saw  that  these  lyrics 
were  always  pitched  in  a  very  minor  key.  Sorrow, 
regret,  disappointment,  pessimism,  despair,  the 
grave,  the  dead,  ghosts  and  the  after- world,  was  the 
burden  of  all.  And  these  were  broken  only  by  wild 
tales  of  revenge,  murder,  treachery,  gibbet,  and  jail 
—fierce  love,  savage  penalty,  and  brutal  crimes  of 
rude  peasants.  These  lyrics  were  gloomy — but  full  of 
power  and  tragic  poetry.  They  took  high  place  beside 
Shelley's  Cenci  and  Stanzas  in  Dejection,  or  Tenny- 
son's The  Sisters  and  his  Rizpah.  Yes  !  but  in  these 
500  lyrics  of  Thomas  Hardy  there  is  almost  nothing 
else.  This  is  too  much.  Shelley,  Keats,  Coleridge, 
Tennyson,  could  be  weird  and  sad  enough  at  times, 
but  the  world  and  man  had  other  meanings  for  them, 
and  they  often  revelled  in  nature,  with  hope,  and  joy 


30  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

and  love.  But  in  this  mass  of  lyrical  effusion,  Nature 
is  a  graveyard  ;  man  is  a  hopeless  mystery ;  love  works 
out  tragedies;  Death  ends  all — but  it  leaves  ghastly 
wraiths  on  earth. 


One  heading  might  serve  as  title  for  nearly  every 
poem  in  this  collection.  It  is  Memento  Mori.  He 
says  : — 

TO  LIFE. 

0  Life  with  the  sad  seared  face, 
I  weary  of  seeing  thee. 

1  know  what  thou  would'st  tell 
Of  Death,  Time,  Destiny. 

(p.  107.) 

This  is  the  idea,  the  refrain,  of  the  whole  series.  The 
Earth  is — "  the  torn  troubled  form  I  know  as  thine." 
There  are  bridals — but  Nature  cares  not  if  they  turn 
out  well  or  ill.  One  wedding  ends  in  a  fire  and  leaves 
the  bridegroom  "  a  charred  bone."  The  lover  goes 
to  wed  his  bride.  He  is  met  on  his  way  by  her  phan- 
tom, i.e.,  his  ideal  image  of  her ;  when  he  reaches  her 
house  he  finds  her  "pinched  and  thin" — she  is  the 
real  woman  of  fact,  of  flesh  and  blood,  the  other  was 
only  his  fancy.  So  the  poet  said  to  Love — "  depart 
thou,  Love" — "thou  hast  features  pitiless,  and  iron 
daggers  of  distress."  Love  replies  that  his  departure 
would  end  Man's  race.  "  So  let  it  be,  Mankind  shall 
cease."  Well!  but  this  is  a  veritable  "Dance  of 
Death."  As  in  the  famous  monkish  myths,  pictures, 


LAST  WORDS  81 

or  tombs,  Death  is  supreme  Lord.  The  rich,  the 
powerful,  the  beautiful,  the  happy,  the  joyous,  the 
bride,  the  mother,  the  lover,  the  illustrious,  the  lowly, 
all  have  the  grim  Skeleton  beside  them.  So  medieval 
mystics  saw  human  life.  So  Thomas  Hardy  seems 
(in  poetry)  to  see  it. 

****** 

This  is  not  Byron's  pose,  nor  the  moaning  of 
Shelley  and  Keats.  Byron,  Shelley,  Keats,  were  all 
exiles  from  home,  decried,  destined  to  early  death 
abroad.  And  yet  their  pessimism  was  occasional. 
But  Thomas  Hardy  has  everything  that  man  can  wish 
— long  and  easy  life,  perfect  domestic  happiness, 
warm  friends,  the  highest  honour  his  Sovereign  can 
give,  the  pride  of  a  wide  countryside.  We  know  him 
as  a  warm  friend,  a  gracious  host,  rich  with  every  kind 
of  public  and  private  virtue.  To  me  at  least,  he  never 
looked  so  mournful  as  in  the  photograph  in  this 
volume ;  nor  did  I  ever  hear  from  his  lips  the  weird 
wail  of  these  verses.  There  is  no  affectation  in  them. 
They  are  his  own  inmost  thoughts — his  philosophy  of 
life.  This  monotony  of  gloom,  with  all  its  poetry,  is 
not  human,  not  social,  not  true. 


Such  plain  speaking  pains  me,  and  I  must  justify 
it.  His  song  to  Annabel  is — "  leave  her  to  her  fate, 
Till  the  Last  Trump,  farewell."  '*  I  look  into  my 
glass  And  view  my  wasting  skin,  And  say  :  Would 
God  it  came  to  pass,  My  heart  had  shrunk  as  thin !  ' 

He  meets  Despair  and  says,  that  black  and  lean 


82  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

may  be  earth,  yet  the  heavens  are  bright.  No  !  cries 
the  Thing — it  is  night  above  too  !  Jubilate  is  a  poem 
of  the  dead  in  a  churchyard  coming  up  out  of  their 
graves  to  dance  and  sing.  Christmas  Eve  brings  up 
a  buried  soldier  to  ask  why  is  it  called  "  Anno 
Domini"?  When  the  Earth  is  at  last  extinct  and 
become  "  a  corpse,"  the  Lord  will  repent  having 
"  made  Earth,  and  life,  and  Man."  In  a  churchyard, 
the  dead  "mixed  to  human  jam,"  complain  of  the 
new  parson  levelling  the  sward  and  moving  their 
memorial  stones.  The  curate  secures  that  an  old 
pauper  going  to  the  workhouse  shall  not  be  separated 
from  his  wife.  Why  !  to  be  separated,  he  says,  is  the 
one  thing  that  reconciles  me  to  the  House !  Roses 
from  the  Riviera  in  winter  are  pleasant — but,  poor 
things,  they  will  rot  in  our  cold  land. 


The  poor  birds,  too,  have  the  same  fate  waiting 
them  as  man  and  flowers  have.  Shelley's  Skylark  may 
thrill  us  with  rapture.  But  near  Leghorn  it  is  fallen 
to  earth — "  a  pinch  of  unseen,  unguarded  dust :  a 
little  ball  of  feather  and  bone."  The  bullfinches  sing 
from  dawn  till  evening,  but  they  do  not  know  of — 
"  All  things  making  for  Death's  taking  !  '  So,  too, 
the  dear  little  robin  is  a  happy  bird  in  a  shining  sky — 
but  in  heavy  snow,  says  he,  "I  turn  to  a  cold  stiff 
feathery  ball."  The  titles  of  the  lyrics  suggest  the 
same  tale.  "  Revulsion,"  "  Her  Death  and  After," 
"Friends  Beyond,"  "The  Souls  of  the  Slain," 
"Doom  and  She,"  "God-forgotten,"  "By  the 


LAST  WORDS  88 

Earth's  Corpse,"  "  The  Levelled  Churchyard,"  "  In 
Tenebris,  I.,  II.,  III.,"  "  I  have  lived  with  Shades," 
"Bereft,"  "The  Flirt's  Tragedy,"  "The  Dead 
Man  Walking,"  "He  abjures  Love,"  "The  Dead 
Quire,"  "The  Vampirine  Fair,"  "After  the  Last 
Breath,"  "  Before  Life  and  After,"  "  The  Unborn  " 
are  warned  not  to  be  born,  "  The  Ghost  of  the  Past," 
"God's  Funeral,"  "Ah!  are  you  digging  on  my 
grave?"  "The  Obliterate  Tomb,"  "The  Choir- 
master's Burial,"  "  For  Life  I  had  never  cared 
greatly,"  "  The  coming  of  the  end." 

At  the  coronation  of  King  George  V.  the  buried 
kings  and  queens  below  ask  what  the  noise  and  dis- 
turbance mean.  At  his  funeral  King  Edward  VII. 
soliloquises  that  perhaps  if  he  were  to  live  again  he 
would  rather  be  a  plain  man.  Vanitas  Vanitatum. 
It  is  not  so  much — Mors  janua  Vitae,  as  it  is  rather — 
Vita  janua  Mortis.  And  the  Portal  opens  to  the 
Nether- world,  not  to  any  world  above. 


We  do  not  shrink  from  the  poetry  of  sorrow — but 
we  want  something  else.  The  Inferno  should  lead  up 
to  Paradiso.  But  in  these  500  poems  there  is  little 
happiness,  joy,  or  hope — save  the  mirth  in  some 
soldiers'  songs  and  fair-time  jaunts.  I  say  nothing  of 
the  form,  which  is  always  vigorous,  rare,  and  of 
unique  quality.  Only  I  regret  that,  like  Meredith, 
Hardy  follows  the  bad  example  of  Browning,  who 
would  deliberately  fashion  verses  of  harsh  discord. 

Here  are  many  poems  without  a  trace  of  melody. 

3 


34  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

And  there  are  pieces  in  this  volume  which  are  painful 
to  see;  too  gruesome,  even  cynical.  "Time's 
Laughingstocks  "  has  some  cruel  pieces — '*  A  Sun- 
day Morning  Tragedy  "  and  others,  such  as  "  The 
Ruined  Maid  "  ;  the  fifteen  "  Satires,"  pp.  391-398 ; 
"Her  Death  and  After."  But,  certainly,  "  Pan- 
thera  "  is  a  myth  with  a  Satanic  grin  which  should 
never  be  unearthed  to-day. 


My  philosophy  of  life  is  more  cheerful  and  hopeful 
than  that  of  these  Lyrics — but  they  do  not  at  all 
diminish  my  entire  admiration  for  The  Dynasts  and 
for  the  Romances.  Truth  to  say,  I  believe  in  Thomas 
Hardy  as  a  great  writer  of  prose — both  in  substance 
and  in  form — more  than  of  verse.  In  romances  at 
any  rate,  though  we  see  the  Lucretian  undertone  in 
them  all,  the  scene  is  above  ground ;  the  actors  are  all 
living  and  are  often  happy  and  prosperous.  These 
delightful  stories  of  his — of  real  life — are,  and  must 
be,  men  and  women — lovers — husbands  and  wives,  in 
a  living  world.  And  real  life  is  not  fated  to  end  in 
nothingness. 


I  take  a  lively  interest  in  the  new  translation  of  the 
grand  medieval  Epic — Chanson  de  Roland.  Captain 
C.  Scott-Moncrieff  has  now  turned  these  4,000  lines 
into  very  literal,  slightly  archaic,  English,  in  the 
original  assonance  measure  (The  Song  of  Roland, 
Chapman  and  Hall,  1919).  It  is  a  bold  and  successful 


LAST  WORDS  35 

venture.  Both  the  poem  itself  and  the  new  version 
raise  special  problems.  The  date,  locality,  and 
authorship  of  the  famous  Song  of  Roland  are  some- 
what uncertain.  Its  rude,  and  at  times  its  barbaric, 
ferocity  is  not  quite  congenial  to  modern  taste  in 
poetry,  satiated  with  Idylls  of  the  King.  Then, 
assonance  is  alien  to  English  rhythm — perhaps  is  im- 
possible to  acclimatise  with  our  double-knotted  and 
crashing  consonants.  The  questions  are  :  Can  these 
fierce  shouts  of  bloodshed,  massacre,  and  torture  be 
made  pleasant  to  those  who  enjoy  the  poetry  of  to- 
day? Can  the  crude  assonance  of  4,000  lines — with- 
out rhythm  or  melody — be  made  tolerable  to  English 
ears  ? 


Captain  Scott-Moncrieff  has  solved  both  problems. 
The  ' '  Roland ' '  is  the  best  preserved  of  the  early 
medieval  epics.  It  certainly  belongs  to  the  end  of 
the  eleventh  century,  just  before  the  first  Crusade, 
and  it  presents  us  with  a  living  picture  of  that  fierce 
time  of  battle  and  fanatical  Christendom.  Its  joy  in 
carnage  and  every  horror  of  the  battlefield,  its  passion 
for  knightly  honour,  reckless  chivalry,  feudal  loyalty 
and  justice,  its  deadly  race  against  the  Infidel  and  the 
Saracen,  its  blind  devotion  to  Church,  ritual,  and 
priests,  are  only  relieved  by  occasional  gleams  of 
friendship,  womanhood,  and  Nature.  But  its  inten- 
sity, vitality,  and  strength  make  it  a  great  poem,  less 
horrible  than  the  Niebelungen,  and  less  fantastic  than 
the  Arthurian  legends.  The  poet  believed  it  all  to  be 


36  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

true,  and  he  exults  in  every  act  of  his  heroes.  Cleav- 
ing an  enemy  from  the  skull  to  the  chine  is  every- 
day 's  work.  Tearing  a  traitor  limb  from  limb  by 
wild  horses  is  feudal  law.  Massacring  a  hundred 
thousand  Paynims  is  God's  service.  An  Archbishop 
is  one  of  the  foremost  Paladins.  All  this  the  Normans 
who  conquered  kingdoms  in  the  eleventh  century  held 
to  be  true  chivalry  and  pure  religion. 


This  monotony  of  slaughter  and  fanaticism  reads 
rather  thin  in  prose,  whether  English  or  French.  To 
transform  it  into  rhymed  couplets  would  destroy  its 
grand  simplicity,  much  as  Pope's  couplets  destroy 
the  Iliad.  To  modernise  it  into  Tennysonian  blank 
verse  would  take  the  sting  out  of  the  lines.  It  has 
to  be  in  verse — then,  in  what  verse?  Captain  Scott- 
Moncrieff  takes  the  ten  syllable  heroic  line  of  Shakes- 
peare and  Milton — but  neither  in  blank  verse  nor  in 
rhyme.  He  follows  the  original  which  is  in  assonance. 
That  is,  the  vowel  sounds  rhyme,  but  not  the  con- 
sonants— "  rage  "  and  "  shame  "  are  good  assonance  ; 
so  are  "chiefs"  and  "seat."  The  same  sound  in 
vowel,  but  not  in  consonant,  endings  has  to  be  kept 
up  all  through  the  "laisse,"  or  stanza — which  may 
run  from  ten  to  fifty  lines.  The  effect  of  this 
assonance  in  English  is  faintly  perceptible,  unless  it 
runs  into  true  rhyme ;  but  it  gives  an  impression  that 
it  is  not  blank  verse,  and  the  sense  is  not  carried  on  by 
involution  of  the  verses.  The  result  is  a  quaint  sense 
of  archaism  which  has  not  the  fine  melody  of  rhymed 


LAST  WORDS  87 

verse,  nor  the  measured  dignity  of  blank  verse,  nor 
yet  the  baldness  of  plain  prose. 


Next,  the  English  used  is  slightly  archaic,  or  rather 
of  the  primitive  ballad  form — like  a  child's  tale. 
Thus,  the  effect  of  the  unusual  assonance,  coupled 
with  the  antiquated  form,  produces  an  impression  of 
sustained  old-world  chant,  intended  solely  to  be 
heard,  not  to  be  read.  This  is  essential  to  the  spirit 
of  the  poem — which  never  was  anything  but  a 
Chanson — a  ballad  for  the  voice — not  the  eye.  No 
prose  can  give  the  ring  of  the  verse — with  its  sense  of 
speed  and  fury,  and  of  almost  delirious  passion  which 
believes  any  extravagance.  Again,  no  regular  modern 
verse  can  picture  the  blood-lust  and  savagery  which 
were  held  to  be  heroism  and  piety  eight  centuries 
ago.  To  my  ear,  the  strange  assonance-rhyme  along 
with  the  old-English  phrasing  come  nearer  to  the 
original  than  either  prose  or  verse  could  attain.  So 
I  take  the  experiment  to  be  a  success  ;  and  I  advise  all 
who  care  for  medieval  history  and  for  primitive  epics 
to  study  the  original  side  by  side  with  Captain  Scott- 
Moncrieff's  translation. 


As  a  specimen  (at  once  of  success  and  failure)  I 
quote  the  lines  of  the  last  prayer  and  death  of  Roland 
(CLXXVI— 2334-2396) :— 


88  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

"  Very  Father,  in  Whom  no  falsehood  is, 
Saint  Lazaron  from  death  Thou  did'st  remit, 
And  Dan-iel  save  from  the  lion's  pit; 
My  soul  in  me  preserve  from  all  perils 
And  from  the  sins  I  did  in  life  commit !  " 
His  right-hand  glove,  to  God  he  offers  it 
Saint  Gabriel  from's  hand  hath  taken  it. 
Over  his  arm  his  head  bows  down  and  slips, 
He  joins  his  hands :  and  so  is  life  finish'd. 
God  sent  him  down  His  angel  cherubin 
And  Saint  Mich-ael  we  worship  in  peril; 
And  by  their  side  Saint  Gabriel  alit; 
So  the  Count's  soul  they  bare  to  Paradis. 


Now  I  have  before  me  three  versions  in  modern 
French  prose — of  F.  Genin,  1850 ;  of  Alex  de  Saint- 
Albin,  1865  ;  and  of  Leon  Gautier,  1894.  And  I  am 
clear  that  the  new  verse  translation  is  quite  as  accurate 
as  these,  and  gives  a  far  truer  sense  of  the  rude  lilt 
of  the  old  Chanson. 

Needless  to  say  that  much  of  this  might  be  im- 
proved. It  is  obviously  a  first  attempt  and  Captain 
Scott-Moncrieff  talks  of  a  new  edition  of  his  work. 
In  the  first  place  he  must  base  his  text  on  that  of 
Leon  Gautier,  Edition  classique,  with  all  its  Notes  and 
Glossary.  Then  let  us  beg  him  to  print  the  original 
text  on  the  same  page,  or,  better,  on  the  opposite 
page  of  the  translation.  I  am  not  going  to  criticise 
details ;  but  there  are  two  words,  the  translation  of 
which  seems  to  me  quite  inexplicable.  Why  is  li  (of 
course  le  from  ille)  always  translated  "  that  "  instead 
of  "the"?  That  Emperor,  that  Count,  that  King 
become  tiresome.  Again,  why  is  chevaucher  always 
"  canter,"  instead  of  "  ride,"  "  gallop  "  or  "  trot  "? 


LAST  WORDS  89 

Even  in  a  charge  of  twenty  thousand  knights,  they 
stick  to  the  ladies'  pace,  and  never  break  into  a  gallop. 

That  Emperor  lie  canters  on  with  rage —  (1812) 

Canter  therefore !    Vengeance  upon  them  do !        (2426) 

The  idea  of  Charles  at  the  head  of  100,000  knights 
"cantering,"  of  the  massed  chivalry  of  France 
charging  with  a  Hyde  Park  canter  on  the  Paynim  is 
too  much  to  bear. 


Assonance  suits  the  wild  primitive  swing  of  the 
ancient  Chant.  But  let  assonance  never  be  intro- 
duced into  English  verse.  It  is  utterly  inapplicable 
to  our  tongue,  which  multiplies  and  sounds  its  final 
consonants — whilst  in  French  these  consonants  are 
mute. 

Quant  Rollant  veit  que  bataille  serat,  (1110) 

Plus  se  fait  fiers  que  leun  ne  leuparz —  (1111) 

Pronounced  in  French  this  couplet  makes  a  fair 
rhyme. 

When  Rollant  .sees  that  now  must  be  combat, 
More  fierce  he's  found  than  lion  or  leopard — 

This  couplet  in  English  does  not  rhyme  at  all. 


MARCH 

-  1920  - 

III 

WITH  bankruptcy,  war,  and  revolution  hanging 
over  Europe,  the  immediate  need  is  an 
official  declaration  by  Britain  that  we  do  not 
now  exact  the  full  measure  of  the  Treaty — so-called 
of  Peace.  It  is,  as  I  said  last  month,  "  impossible, 
ruinous,  suicidal."  When  I  so  described  it  I  had  not 
seen  Mr.  Keynes'  book  on  its  Economic  Consequences 
(Macmillan,  14th  thousand,  1920).  The  world  had 
already  condemned  the  Treaty  as  an  elaborate  scheme 
to  crush  Germany  and  Austria  for  a  whole  generation, 
to  which  the  fierce  passion  of  the  French  Minister 
and  the  Mosaic  judgment  of  the  American  President 
had  made  us  a  party.  Wilson  and  Clemenceau  are 
gone ;  and  the  dominant  part  which  Wilson  held  when 
he  came  to  Europe  in  1918  has  now  passed  to  Britain. 
France  and  Italy  may  struggle  to  get  the  vast  sums 
and  the  rich  lands  they  claim  from  Germany  and 
Austria.  But  we  can,  and  we  must,  revise  the 
Treaty — or  chaos  waits  for  us,  at  home  and  abroad. 
No  doubt  the  British  Government  cannot  now  with- 
draw from  the  Entente.  Any  formal  alteration  of 

the  Treaty  must  be  made  by  the  League  of  Nations. 

40 


LAST  WORDS  41 

But  Britain  should  at  once  make  it  clear  how  far  it 

will    assist    in    crushing    Germany  and    paralysing 
Europe. 


Mr.  Keynes'  book  has  now  been  published  many 
months,  and  no  sort  of  official  reply  to  it  has  been 
issued.  Nothing  but  the  angry  cries  of  bureaucrats 
has  been  heard.  No  such  crushing  indictment  of  a 
great  act  of  international  policy,  no  such  revelation 
of  the  futility  of  diplomats  has  ever  been  made.  In 
the  teeth  of  its  masterly  analysis  the  literal  execution 
of  the  Treaty  is  out  of  the  question,  for  it  would 
strangle  our  own  industrial  revival.  The  Prime 
Minister  said  at  first — whatever  he  said  afterwards — 
that  we  "  were  not  going  to  wreck  our  own  indus- 
tries." We  are  doing  it  now.  Whatever  public 
men,  in  or  out  of  office,  may  have  talked  about 
penalties,  indemnities,  and  reparation,  whatever 
exultant  millions  expected  in  their  triumph,  we  must 
all  face  the  facts  that  these  promises  and  hopes  can- 
not be  fulfilled ;  and  to  talk  more  about  them  is  to 
starve  Europe  and  ruin  ourselves.  It  is  one  of  the 
canons  of  an  unlimited  democracy  :  populus  vult 
decipi — et  decipiatur.  If  Aristides  will  not  humour 
their  passions,  he  must  retire  into  exile. 


I  have  carefully  studied  Mr.  Keynes'  book,  and  I 
entirely  agree  with  his  main  conclusions.  So  far  as  it 
is  a  personal  criticism  of  ministers  and  a  political 


42  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

pamphlet,  I  say  nothing;  nor  do  I  pretend  to  judge 
the  details  of  his  economic  estimates  and  his  proposed 
"  remedies."  Whatever  may  be  his  miscalculations 
or  his  indiscretions,  he  has  made  out  an  overwhelming 
case  against  the  Treaty  as  it  stands — on  its  economic 
side  and  the  scale  of  its  reparations.  We  are  not  likely 
to  agree  to  Mr.  Keynes'  doctrine  that  the  Germans 
can  bind  us  to  the  exact  language  of  Mr.  Wilson's 
various  addresses,  speeches  and  letters ;  the  words  of 
which  not  ten  men  in  Europe  or  in  America  had  in 
mind  on  November  llth,  1918,  when  the  German 
delegates  accepted  Foch's  terms.  They  knew  they 
were  exhausted  and  might  be  utterly  destroyed.  To 
talk  about  Wilson's  orations  in  New  York  as  inter- 
preting the  Treaty  is  mere  debating  verbiage. 


The  main  points  on  which  the  Treaty  is  unworkable 
are  these :  (1)  The  annihilation  of  the  German  mer- 
cantile marine  is  extravagant,  if  German  trade  is  to 
exist  at  all.  Unless  it  does,  no  payments  can  be  made. 
(2)  To  exclude  Germany  from  all  overseas  possessions 
and  to  confiscate  all  property  of  Germans  therein  is  a 
further  destruction  of  German  trade.  (3)  The  expro- 
priation of  German  private  property  is  a  vindictive 
and  immoral  provision ;  and  when  it  is  extended  to 
non-German  lands,  and  even  to  those  of  neutrals,  the 
whole  scheme  is  ludicrous  by  its  impossibility,  as  well 
as  infamous  in  its  spite.  The  complicated  attempt  to 
make  Germany  an  outlaw  in  international  trade — 


LAST  WORDS  48 

economically  outside  the  pale  of  civilised  nations — is 
little  more  than  a  grim  joke. 


As  to  the  provisos  about  coal  and  metal,  whilst  the 
savage  destruction  of  mines  by  the  defeated  Germans 
must  be  repaired,  this  ought  not  to  be  carried  out  with 
a  violence  which  would  stifle  German  industries.  And 
the  prolonged  occupation  of  purely  German  lands, 
especially  those  lying  far  to  the  East,  will  be  a  con- 
tinuous source  of  unrest  to  Germany  and  of  risk  to 
the  Allies.  And  the  same  holds  good  of  the  railway 
and  river  transport  in  German  territories.  Again, 
the  embargo  on  the  union  of  German  Austria  with 
the  Empire  is  wanton  blindness.  In  the  first  place, 
the  union  is  inevitable,  and,  in  the  next  place,  with- 
out such  union  Vienna  is  a  starving  derelict.  Writing 
whilst  everything  is  still  in  the  making,  and  the 
League  without  U.S.A.  in  suspended  animation, 
waiting  for  "  artificial  respiration,"  I  shall  say 
nothing  now  about  territorial  rearrangements.  Many 
of  them  are  quite  questionable,  and  will  have  to  be 
modified.  Poland  is  a  desperate  crux. 


The  strength  of  Mr.  Keynes'  book,  and  the  key  to 
the  problems  of  Europe,  lie  in  the  scheme  of  repara- 
tion, as  designed  in  the  Treaty.  Its  literal  exaction 
would  deprive  the  populations  of  Europe,  including 
our  own,  of  the  means  of  livelihood.  I  make  no 
attempt  to  explain,  or  to  criticise,  the  figures  given  by 


44  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

Mr.  Keynes,  who  is  a  consummate  economic  and 
financial  authority.  The  world  knows  that,  after 
detailed  examination,  he  puts  as  a  total  recoverable 
from  Germany  in  a  course  of  years  a  sum  not  more 
than  two  thousand  millions  of  pounds  in  one  form  or 
other.  Perhaps,  if  he  were  writing  to-day  instead  of 
last  autumn,  he  would  not  put  it  higher  than  one 
thousand  million,  and  that  without  interest  over  a 
long  period.  For  my  part,  I  should  be  glad  to  hope 
that  the  Allies  together  may  receive  even  that  reduced 
sum. 


It  may  be  asked — how  came  such  an  extravagant 
scheme  to  be  made  by  the  Heads  of  the  Great  Powers, 
and  accepted  by  the  democracies  of  Britain,  America, 
and  France  ?  The  answer  is  that  it  was  done  in  secret 
sessions ;  the  real  meanings  were  falsified ;  and  when 
the  Gargantuan  Treaty  of  June  28th,  1919,  was  at  last 
published,  none  but  professional  publicists  ever  read 
it  through,  and  none  but  professional  economists  could 
understand  its  subtle  effects.  The  thing  was  a  case 
of  cephalitis  turgida — "  Swelled  head."  Wilson 
caught  the  disease  from  Wilhelm ;  and  he  improved 
on  it,  with  the  American  way  of  going  ten  times  better 
than  anyone  else.  He  infected  France ;  and  then 
British  good  sense  succumbed.  And  in  the  hulla- 
baloo of  the  Peace  celebrations  real  facts  and  imminent 
dangers  were  hidden  away  and  overlooked.  We  were 
hoodwinked.  I  know  that  I  was. 


LAST  WORDS  45 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  criticise  the  "  remedies  "  pro- 
posed by  Mr.  Keynes,  nor  do  I  venture  to  propose  any 
others.  The  burning  question  of  the  hour  is  rather 
by  what  power,  and  under  what  authority,  can  any 
remedies  be  effected.  As  the  Treaty  and  the  Cove- 
nant stand,  the  only  lawful  way  of  modifying  the 
Treaty  is  by  revision  by  the  League  of  Nations.  The 
Niagara  Treaty  was  signed  by  twenty-eight  States. 
It  consists  of  440  Articles,  and  occupied  eighty-four 
columns  of  close  print  in  the  Times.  The  League  of 
Nations  is  the  Court  of  Appeal.  What  is  the  League 
of  Nations  doing  now  ?  And  if  it  be  in  active  session, 
what  chance  is  there  of  any  decision  being  taken  when, 
by  the  constitution,  all  decisions  must  be  unanimous? 
Is  it  conceivable  that  France  or  Italy  will  release  their 
claims  and  forgo  the  awards  on  which  they  built  such 
hopes  ?  And  must  we  be  bound  by  their  claims  and 
their  hopes  ?  I  trust  not. 


Even  if  the  fatal  Liberum  Veto  did  not  exist,  when 
is  the  League  going  to  act  in  force  ?  But  the  dangers, 
the  famine,  the  bankruptcy  are  urgent.  Something 
must  be  done  at  once.  As  immediate  and  official 
revision  by  the  League  is  out  of  the  question — 
as  indeed  the  Treaty  at  the  moment  is  almost  a  scrap 
of  paper  again — action  is  left  for  Britain,  the  only 
Power  whose  head  is  beginning  to  shrink  to  normal 
proportions.  We  can,  and  we  must,  by  any  such 
diplomatic  camouflage  as  will  serve,  make  it  under- 
stood by  Germany  that  at  least  by  us  the  penal 


46  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

articles  of  reparation  will  now  be  partly  relaxed — and 
at  any  rate  will  be  postponed.  U.S.A.,  which  is  out 
of  the  game,  "  retired  hurt,"  will  not  complain.  Nor 
will  Japan,  which  has  cynically  watched  the  suicide 
of  Europe.  If  France  insists  on  full  payment,  if  Italy 
desires  both  sides  of  the  Adriatic  and  part  of  Asia 
Minor,  they  must  take  their  own  course.  Britain  is 
not  bound  to  help  them  to  ruin  civilisation,  whilst  the 
author  and  potential  President  of  the  Covenant  is 
"  not  taking  any." 

****** 

I  turn  to  another  book  on  the  Treaty  and  the 
League — Europe  and  the  League  of  Nations,  by 
Charles  Sarolea  (G.  Bell  and  Sons,  1919) — a  masterly 
criticism  of  the  Versailles  settlement  by  one  who  is  a 
firm  believer  in  the  idea  of  the  Covenant,  but  has  made 
a  thorough  study  of  all  the  difficulties  and  dangers  it 
presents.  Mr.  Sarolea,  by  birth  a  Belgian,  long 
settled  in  Britain,  and  now  Professor  in  the  University 
of  Edinburgh,  is  one  of  the  best  living  authorities  in 
the  languages,  history,  and  diplomacy  of  the 
European  Powers.  His  book  serves  as  a  counterpart 
and  supplement  to  that  of  Mr.  Keynes,  for  it  deals 
largely  with  the  territorial  and  national  problems  of 
the  settlement,  as  Mr.  Keynes  deals  with  the  economic 
and  reparation  problems.  The  two  books  together 
make  an  unanswerable  case  for  the  immediate  revision 
of  the  Treaty  and  for  the  consolidation  of  the  visionary 
League  of  Nations  into  a  practical  international 

Union. 

****** 


LAST  WORDS  47 

Mr.  Sarolea  begins  by  grasping  the  enormous 
problems  presented  by  the  dissolution  of  four  great 
Empires  that  extend  from  the  Rhine  to  the  Pacific. 
I  hope  he  overstates  the  case  in  saying — "  it  will  take 
fifty  years  to  organise  the  new  Europe."  Certainly 
it  was  not  done  in  six  months  at  Versailles.  The  only 
remedy  against  chaos  and  famine,  he  says,  is  inter- 
national co-operation ;  but  Mr.  Sarolea  rather  under- 
values true  patriotism — which  should  be  neither 
aggressive  nor  exclusive.  He  stoutly  defends  the 
claim  of  the  smaller  nations  to  an  equal  voice  in  the 
League  on  the  principle  of  the  American  Senate's 
equality  of  votes.  The  most  valuable  part  of  his  criti- 
cism is  the  discussion  of  the  **  Obstacles  to  the 
League  "  :  (1)  military — that  of  disarmament  by  land 
and  by  sea  ;  (2)  political — the  conflict  of  external  and 
internal  disputes  between  races  and  religions ;  (3) 
domestic — the  adjustment  of  delegacies  to  the  League 
with  the  changing  representatives  of  nations  at  home  ; 
(4)  then  come  in  difficulties  economic,  of  the  League, 
or  of  separate  nations ;  (5)  that  of  the  biologic  growth 
of  peoples  within  their  own  borders ;  (6)  that  of  race 
and  of  language,  of  national  sentiment,  of  religion,  of 
intellectual  culture ;  (7)  of  organisation  within  the 
League;  and,  finally,  of  its  executive  power,  i.e.,  of 
the  sanction  to  compel  submission  to  its  decisions.  He 
truly  says  :  * '  A  weak  League  of  Nations  would  be  far 
more  dangerous  than  no  League  of  Nations."  As 
things  are,  he  sees  that  the  League  is  rudimentary ; 
but  he  has  faith  that  all  these  obstacles  can  be  over- 
come. 


48  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

Would  that  our  able  Labour  leaders  and  the  vast 
organisations  they  control  would  take  to  heart  all  that 
Mr.  Sarolea  writes  in  his  Chapter  VII.  on  "  Democ- 
racy in  Foreign  Policy."  He  shows  how  the  settle- 
ment of  Versailles  was  a  compromise  made  under  con- 
flicting party  cries  at  home.  "  The  Congress  of 
Versailles  mainly  reflected  the  mind  of  the  mob, 
whilst  the  Congress  of  Vienna  (1814)  reflected  the 
sober  reason  of  a  few  responsible  statesmen. "  By  the 
"  mob  mind  "  he  means,  first,  the  mind  of  the  war 
party,  and  next,  "  the  mob  mind  systematically 
worked  by  a  sensational  Press  and  secretly  acted  upon 
by  private  financial  interests."  "  Modern  democra- 
cies have  been  more  generally  aggressive  than 
pacifist."  And  he  insists  on  a  really  essential  axiom 
when  he  writes  that  "  under  modern  conditions  a  body 
of  expert  specialist  diplomats  is  even  more  necessary 
than  under  the  old  conditions."  "  Amateur  diplo- 
macy by  party  politicians  "  is  a  source  of  danger  and 
confusion.  The  popular  cry  for  all  open  diplomacy 
in  the  eyes  of  the  people  is  as  preposterous  as  to  ask 
that  bankers  and  traders  should  make  all  business  deals 
in  open  exchange.  The  ultimate  assent  of  the  nation 
to  any  liability  imposed  on  it  is  a  totally  different  thing 
from  the  public  discussion  of  its  conditions. 


One  of  the  most  valuable  chapters  in  this  book  is 
that  on  the  "  Future  of  Poland. "  He  shows  how  the 
policy  of  the  Allies  has  varied  thrice.  At  the  outset 
there  were  Polish  armies  in  every  one  of  the  three 


LAST  WORDS  49 

great  armies — shooting  down  each  other.  At  first 
the  Allies  used  Poland  against  Prussia  and  Austria. 
When  Russia  entered  Galicia  the  cause  of  the  Poles 
was  forgotten  and  suppressed.  At  the  end  of  the  war, 
with  Russia  out  of  it,  the  Allies  took  up  the  cause 
again,  and  even  worked  to  make  Poland  a  barrier  to 
separate  Germany  from  Russia.  Truly  tragic  is  the 
state  of  Poland,  as  Mr.  Sarolea  with  first-hand  know- 
ledge describes  it  as  * l  the  most  vulnerable  of  the  new 
States."  It  has  no  real  frontier  :  an  open  plain,  an 
historic  battlefield.  It  has  neither  true  limits  nor 
centre,  is  surrounded  by  its  secular  enemies,  with  no 
homogeneous  race,  and  with  five  millions  of  Jews 
whom  it  cannot  assimilate,  of  German  and  Russian 
origins.  Divided  in  races,  religions,  industry,  classes, 
and  by  tradition,  Poland  is  at  the  mercy  of  its  mighty 
neighbours.  Its  one  hope  lies  in  the  League  of 
Nations,  which  as  yet  is  itself  little  more  than  a  hope. 


It  is  an  axiom  of  politics  that  as  between  nations 
the  sentiment  of  gratitude  has  no  place.  To-day  we 
might  rather  say  that  ingratitude  is  the  natural  and 
normal  rule.  We  are  told  that  our  country  is  now  the 
object  of  universal  ill-will  and  depreciation  among  our 
Allies  and  friendly  neutrals.  This  is  utterly  unreason- 
able, but  it  seems  to  be  human  nature.  There  is  not 
one  Power  which  we  have  injured — nor  even  one  that 
we  have  not  helped  and  treated  with  singular  amity. 
That  France  should  turn  round  on  us  and  talk  of 
breaking  up  the  Entente  would  be  monstrous.  If  in 

4 


50  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

August,  1914,  we  had  not  rushed  in  to  save  her, 
France  would  be  now  reduced  to  the  level  of  Spain — 
if  not  of  another  Poland.  Where  is  our  offence? 
Simply  that  we  refuse  to  be  dragged  by  France  to 
decimate  and  crush  Germany  and  to  second  all  her 
claims  to  some  Mediterranean  coasts.  Poland  is  sore 
that  we  cannot  guarantee  her  the  extensions  she 
demands.  Roumania,  Italy,  Serbia,  Greece,  Syria, 
Arabia — all  make  impracticable  claims  and  charge  us 
with  deserting  them.  Because  the  nations  are  bitter 
to  find  their  extravagant  hopes  unrealised,  they  turn 
round  upon  the  Power  which  for  the  time  is  the  least 
stricken  and  seems  the  strongest. 


We  have  gained  nothing  ourselves  to  the  detriment 
of  any  one  of  these  nations.  On  the  contrary,  we 
have  done  all  we  can  to  help  them  in  men,  arms,  and 
money.  Our  sole  offence  is  that  we  will  not — because 
we  cannot — do  more ;  and  we  refuse  to  follow  them  in 
aggressive  and  impossible  adventures.  Italy  calls  on 
us  to  curb  the  Serbs  and  the  Greeks.  Serbs  and 
Greeks  call  on  us  to  resist  the  aggression  of  Italy. 
Under  the  impulse  of  Wilson — the  Old  Man  of  the 
Sea  striding  on  the  Covenant — no  doubt  we  promised 
more  than  we  can  perform .  Things  change — Govern- 
ments change — and  what  is  possible  one  month  is  im- 
possible the  next.  In  all  our  long  history  there  never 
was  a  time  when  the  Governments  of  Britain  were 
faced  with  such  a  sea  of  dilemmas.  At  home  and 
abroad  they  are  beset  with  cries  to  embark  on  policies 


LAST  WORDS  51 

which  are  contradictory,  impossible,  would  mean  new 
losses,  further  debt,  even  more  wars — whilst  the  whole 
world  is  heaving  as  if  it  were  waiting  for  an  earth- 
quake. Give  us  all  we  ask — cry  foreign  nations  !  Do 
this — and  do  not  do  that ! — is  the  babel  of  party  cries 
at  home.  The  confusion  abroad  and  at  home  makes 
any  action  impossible — even  if  Heaven  sent  an  arch- 
angel to  be  our  Minister. 

****** 
Of  all  the  attacks  on  us,  the  most  unreasonable  are 
those  of  the  baser  party  Press  in  America.  Of  what 
can  the  Republic  complain  ?  When  war  broke  out  it 
stood  officially  (not  too  benevolently)  neutral, 
grumbling  about  maritime  rights  recognised  by 
nations  for  centuries  and  practised  of  late  by  U.S.A. 
We  accepted  the  lead  of  their  President  when  he  came 
over,  as  if  he  were  President  of  the  United  States  of 
Europe.  We  joined  in  with  his  tremendous  schemes 
for  re-organising  the  world.  Was  it  for  us  to  ask  him 
to  prove  that  he  represented  his  nation  ?  What  would 
have  happened  if  we  had  said — Bring  over  senators  of 
both  parties,  or  we  cannot  recognise  you  as  repre- 
senting your  country  ?  To  make  our  Irish  trouble  an 
American  injury  is  an  outrageous  defiance  of  national 
independence.  What  if  we  treated  as  a  British  injury 
the  oppression  of  their  coloured  citizens  and  our 
Japanese  allies,  or  of  all  who  choose  to  drink  alcohol. 
The  Irish  problem  is  a  struggle  between  two  races  and 
two  religions,  not  in  Britain,  but  in  Ireland — as  much 
a  domestic  question  as  that  between  Democrats  and 
Republicans  in  the  States. 


52  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

A  new  translation  in  verse  of  Lucretius  which  has 
just  reached  me — Lucretius  on  the  Nature  of  Things, 
by  Sir  Robert  Allison  (Arthur  L.  Humphreys,  1919) 
— turned  my  thoughts  again  to  the  great  Roman  poet, 
who  in  the  lurid  times  of  the  old  Republic  meditated 
on  the  World  and  on  Man.  It  is  a  book  to  study  in 
our  not  quite  dissimilar  days.  And  I  at  once  re-read 
Morley's  stirring  chapter  in  his  Recollections,  Vol. 
II.,  pp.  113-130,  which  he  calls  "  An  Easter  Digres- 
sion ' '  :  a  disquisition  on  the  Lucretian  theory  of  Life 
and  Death.  After  some  telling  passages  from  ancient 
and  modern  writers,  he  "  revives  his  memories  of 
Lucretius  "  ;  and  a  fascinating  study  in  criticism  it  is. 
He  begins  by  quoting  various  estimates  and  transla- 
tions of  the  poet,  and  what  has  been  said  of  him  by 
Dryden,  Polignac,  Voltaire,  Lamartine,  Macaulay, 
Mommsen,  Goethe ;  and  then  Morley  gives  us  his  own 
idea  of  the  Pessimism  of  Lucretius — warmly  praising 
the  brilliant  Chapter  IV.,  which  J.  W.  Mackail 
devotes  to  this  poet  in  that  most  masterly  of  all  hand- 
books— his  Latin  Literature. 


Sir  Robert  Allison,  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge, 
already  known  by  his  translations  of  Plautus  and  of 
Cicero,  has  now  put  the  7,400  lines  of  Lucretius'  six 
books  into  close  and  literal  blank  verse,  nearly  keeping 
line  for  line.  It  is  impossible  to  render  Latin  hexa- 
meters into  English  pentameters  in  quite  the  same 
space — above  all,  such  closely-knit  verse  as  that  of 
Lucretius — without  at  times  sacrificing  an  epithet. 


LAST  WORDS  53 

But  this  is  far  better  than  Dry  den's  way  of  adding 
needless  words.  So  the  English  reader,  who  finds 
Munro's  exact  prose  version  of  these  mighty  meta- 
physics rather  too  stiff  and  lugubrious,  may  read  the 
entire  poem  in  Sir  Robert  Allison's  accurate,  easy, 
and  sonorous  lines.  He  adds  to  the  charm  of  Lucre- 
tius by  constant  quotations  in  foot-notes  of  parallel 
passages  from  modern  poets — Spenser,  Milton, 
Shakespeare,  Marlowe,  Gray,  Byron,  Keats,  Tenny- 
son, Browning,  Swinburne — several  of  these  being 
evident  reminiscences  of  the  Latin  lines. 

****** 

I  cite  a  few  lines  of  Sir  Robert's  version  of  some 
famous  phrases  that  everyone  knows  : — 

Tantum  religio  potuit  suadere   malorum.    I.    101. 
To  such  dread  deeds  did  superstition  lead — 

Humana  ante  oculos  foede  cum  vita  jaceret 

In  terris  oppressa  gravi  sub  religione 

Quae  caput  a  caeli  regionibus  ostendebat 

Horribili  super  aspectu  mortalibus  instans, 

Primum  Graius  homo  mortales  tollesre  contra 

Est  oculos  ausus  primusque  obsistere  contra.    I.    62-67. 

When  human  life  lay  grovelling  on  the  ground, 
A  piteous  sight,  by  superstition  crushed, 
Who  lifting  high  her  head  from  heaven,  looked  down 
With  lowering  look,  then  first  a  man  of  Greece 
Dared  lift  his  eyes,  and  dared  to  face  the  foe. 

Augescunt  aliae  gentes,  aliae  minuuntur 

Inque  brevi  spatio  mutantiir  saecla  animantum 

Et  quasi  cursores  vital  lampada  tradunt.        II.    77-79. 

Some  nations  wax  and  others  wane,  and  soon 
The  races  of  mankind  are  changed,  and  each 
In  turn  to  other  hands  the  torch  of  life, 
As  runners  do. 


54  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

I  welcome  a  second  and  revised  edition  of  Mr.  F. 
S.  Marvin's  Century  of  Hope  (Oxford,  Clarendon 
Press,  1920).  It  is  a  worthy  continuation  of  The 
Living  Past,  now  in  its  fourth  impression,  at  the  same 
press.  The  former  book  was  a  sketch  of  Western 
Progress  down  to  1815.  The  new  volume  is  a  manual 
of  the  growth  of  political,  social,  scientific,  and  artistic 
humanity  from  Waterloo  to  the  Great  War  (1815- 
1914).  It  is,  of  course,  only  a  summary  of  the  leading 
ideas  in  thought,  and  of  the  decisive  events  which  made 
the  unity  of  the  West  and  the  progress  of  a  common 
civilisation.  It  deals  with  Nationality  and  Im- 
perialism, with  Socialism,  Internationalism,  Evolu- 
tion, Education,  and  Religion,  in  the  same  spirit  of 
judicial  sanity,  sound  learning,  and  synthetic  imagina- 
tion, which  make  the  former  book  a  trustworthy 
manual  for  the  teacher.  And  though  written  by  an 
ardent  patriot  in  the  midst  of  war,  it  is  perfectly  just 
to  Teutonic  energy  and  genius. 


The  Century  of  Hope  is  a  standing  rebuke  to  the 
shallow  jesters  who  cast  stones  at  Victorians — at  the 
work  of  their  own  fathers  and  grandfathers — as  if  the 
nineteenth  century  was  an  age  of  conventional 
formulas  and  contented  torpor.  On  the  contrary,  it 
was  an  epoch  of  concentrated  effort  to  expand  the  life 
of  civilisation  in  new  achievement.  It  did  not  think 
this  could  be  realised  in  an  intellectual  and  moral  go- 
as-you-like ;  nor  did  it  hail  a  millennium  in  anything 
which  looked  new  and  surprising.  But,  as  Mr.  Marvin 


LAST  WORDS  55 

shows,  the  age  from  1815  to  1914  was  inspired  by 
optimism — at  once  sane  and  instructed.  Pessimism 
and  optimism  are  labels  flung  about  by  the  frivolous 
or  the  ignorant.  To  be  obsessed  either  by  gloom  or 
by  hope,  without  knowledge  of  facts,  is  equally 
wrong.  Humanity  is  ever  encircled  with  tremendous 
difficulties  :  it  is  endowed  with  incalculable  powers  of 
recuperation.  The  ignorant  do  not  see  the  dangers ; 
the  poor-hearted  do  not  feeVthe  hope.  The  wise  man 
is  often  full  of  anxiety  for  the  immediate  future  :  he 
never  loses  faith  in  ultimate  victory.  He  is  always  at 
once  pessimist  and  optimist ;  for  he  never  underrates 
the  practical  difficulties  which  obstruct  the  path  of 
progress.  But  all  the  time  he  knows  that  progress 
must  in  the  end  prevail.  And  in  the  darkest  hour  he 
awaits  the  certain  Dawn  of  Light. 


APRIL 

-  1920  - 
IV 

THE  great  Conference  of  Powers,  on  which  the 
hopes  of  civilisation  rest  and  for  which  infernal 
chaos  yawns,  is  fast  becoming  a  matter  of  comic 
opera,  pantomime,  and  romance.  The  firm  of  Spen- 
low, Jorkins,  and  others,  are  at  their  old  game.  Mr. 
Spenlow  is  in  Court — but  he  can  be  sent  for  :  he  bobs 
about  between  Court  and  the  office.  He  has  a  partner 
— Mr.  Jorkins,  "  who  keeps  himself  in  the  back- 
ground." Mr.  Jorkins  is  not  seen,  "  he  cannot  be 
seen  at  present."  But  nothing  can  be  done  in  busi- 
ness without  his  approval.  "  Mr.  Jorkins  is  immov- 
able." Mr.  Jorkins  will  not  listen  to  this.  Mr. 
Jorkins  "  will  have  his  bond."  He  does  not  come 
down  into  the  office  to  discuss  things  with  his  partners. 
However  "  painful  to  their  feelings,"  the  partners 
dare  not  act  without  him.  He  is  really  "  a  mild  man 
of  a  heavy  temperament  " — but  he  is  "  the  most 
obdurate  of  men."  That  is  why  business  drags  on  in 
the  firm  of  Spenlow  and  Jorkins.  Alas !  There  is 
no  comedy  at  all.  It  is  the  Tragedy  of  Nations,  in  the 
twentieth-century  crisis  of  the  civilisation  of  the 
world.  Famine,  massacre,  more  war — all  are  around 
and  upon  us.  Everything  is  adjourned  till  the  Powers 

can  agree. 

#          »         *  *         *          * 


LAST  WORDS  57 

The  imminent  danger  is  that  the  League  of  Nations 
may  become  a  potential  source  of  international 
animosity  and  disputes.  So  far  from  being  a  means 
of  restoring  harmony,  it  is  rapidly  breeding  new 
grounds  of  division.  The  twentieth-century  Gospel 
of  Peace  is  passing  into  a  game  of  grab.  Europe  was 
not  altogether  peaceful  before  1914 ;  but  two  great 
Alliances  and  Ententes  held  the  great  Powers  in  some 
common  policies.  America  was  thriving  more  than 
ever  and  kept  aloof.  Asia  and  Africa  had  local 
troubles,  but  nothing  revolutionary.  In  1920  it  is  all 
changed.  The  League  of  Nations  has  stirred  a 
cosmopolitan  eruption,  far  more  than  Rousseau's 
Contrat  Social  stirred  up  European  revolution.  For 
a  generation  the  Powers  have  never  been  so  bitter,  so 
jealous,  so  suspicious,  so  keen  to  seize  all  they  can,  so 
prone  to  resent  each  others'  acts,  so  obstinate  in  refus- 
ing agreement.  This  is  true  of  all.  The  United 
States  are  torn  asunder  by  the  Covenant.  They  made 
war  and  still  do  not  make  peace. 


I  have  always  been — and  I  am  still — an  ardent 
believer  in  the  great  destiny  and  the  grand  example 
of  the  Republic.  When  I  came  back  from  my  unfor- 
gotten  intercourse  with  its  patriotic  citizens  now 
twenty  years  ago,  I  published  in  my  Memoirs  my  deep 
conviction  that  they  hold  "  the  crucial  pivots  on 
which  the  future  of  humanity  will  turn,  so  that  the 
van  of  human  progress  will  ultimately  point  toward 
the  West."  I  think  so  still :  I  have  never  doubted 


58  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

it.  The  idea  of  a  confederation  of  Nations  is  one  that 
I  have  myself  preached  all  my  life.  When  Mr. 
Wilson  formulated  it  with  such  eloquence  and  moral 
fervour,  I  was  ready  to  welcome  the  Utopian  scheme 
as  an  ideal ;  though  I  said  the  nations  were  not  ripe 
for  it  unless  the  spiritual  exaltation  during  the  war  had 
given  them  new  souls  and  had  cast  out  the  devils  of 
national  greed,  jealousy,  and  hate.  As  to  the 
Adriatic  and  Eastern  problems,  I  think  Mr.  Wilson 
was  right,  and  I  wish  the  other  Powers  had  accepted 
his  lead.  On  the  other  hand,  the  reservations  of  the 
Senate  seem  to  me  inevitable,  just,  and  necessary  ;  and 
I  trust  that  the  League  will  be  modified  in  accordance 
with  them.  But  the  paralysis  of  Europe,  and  the 
advance  on  it  of  famine  and  confusion,  are  too  heavy 
a  price  to  pay  even  for  a  more  reasonable  form  of 
peace. 


An  idle  discussion  seems  to  be  arising  as  to  whether 
Labour  "  can  form  a  Government  ";  and  this  can 
only  be  settled  by  the  old  rule  :  solvitur  ambulando. 
Surely  no  one  who  watches  the  debates  in  Parliament 
and  in  the  recent  Trades  Union  Congress  can  doubt 
that  such  men  as  now  fill  the  Labour  benches,  and 
many  more  such  men  as  are  quite  ready  and  very  likely 
to  join  them,  can  form  a  Ministry  fully  competent  to 
carry  the  House  with  them  and  to  hold  their  own  in 
debate.  Many  an  independent  observer  would  be 
glad  to  see  such  men  as  Mr.  Clynes,  Mr.  J.  H. 
Thomas,  Mr.  Adamson,  released  from  perpetual  criti- 


LAST  WORDS  59 

cism  and  placed  with  all  the  responsibility  of  power. 
But  this  is  only  the  House  of  Commons'  point  of  view, 
which  now  is  but  part,  perhaps  not  the  principal  part, 
of  the  vast  new  problem  of  Government.  The  war 
and  the  world-revolution  that  followed  have  changed 
all  things,  and  especially  the  tremendous  task  of 
administering  this  amorphous  and  unexampled 
Empire.  At  times  the  House  seems  to  be  a  mere 
Duma  with  no  force  behind  it  at  all.  All  the  real 
forces  seem  to  be  seething  inside  and  around  the 
United  Kingdom. 


What  Mr.  Clynes  and  his  able  comrades  will  have 
to  consider  is  this.  How  are  they  going  to  keep  in 
hand  the  "  extreme  men,"  as  they  are  called,  who 
may  be  a  small  minority,  but  whose  passion  will  seek 
to  realise  the  dream  of  "  social  liquidation,"  so  dear 
to  European  revolutionists,  yet  which  the  organised 
and  entrenched  resources  of  British  Conservatism  will 
not  "  take  lying  down,"  as  did  the  plutocracy  of 
Russia.  No  one  can  suspect  any  Bolshevism  in  Par- 
liamentary Labour,  but  there  is  plenty  of  it  outside ; 
and  it  is  one  of  the  marks  of  aggressive  Democracy 
to  denounce  as  traitors  those  leading  democrats  who 
achieve  place  and  powrer.  What  has  become  of 
Kerensky  and  Prince  Lvof  ?  To  the  question — How 
will  Labour  fill  the  minor  and  permanent  offices  of 
civil  and  imperial  administration  which  require  expert 
and  specially  trained  servants — a  service  every  day 
becoming  more  complicated  and  more  arduous  ? — it  is 


60  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

usual  to  reply — Oh !  the  permanent  services  will  be 
used.  Yes  !  but  will  they  not  be  the  real  masters  of 
policy?  Will  not  the  extremists  denounce  them? 
Besides,  if  the  extirpation  of  Capitalism  were  to  suc- 
ceed, how  is  the  expert  training  to  be  got?  The 
whole  of  our  civil,  legal,  economic,  military,  and 
financial  administration  is  born,  bred,  and  trained 
under  Capitalism — can  be  trained  in  no  other  way. 
Lenin  has  to  get  his  experts  by  high  pay  and 
terrorism.  He  has  to  bribe  or  drive  back  to  work  the 
able  men  of  the  old  regime,  and  he  dare  not  trust 
them.  To  work  the  vast  and  complicated  machine  of 
modern  society  there  is  needed  a  lifelong  training  in 
administration  and  the  inherited  and  instinctive 
resources  of  capitalist  families. 


Writing  before  the  new  Irish  Bill  has  been  debated, 
it  is  impossible  to  criticise  it.  As  I  am  half  Irish  in 
blood,  have  been  since  1867  a  public  advocate  of  Irish 
Nationalism,  and  in  1886  was  a  Gladstonian  candidate 
for  Home  Rule,  I  cannot  forbear  a  word  about  the 
most  crucial  problem  that  has  tried  British  Govern- 
ment in  my  memory.  The  new  Bill  is,  to  my  mind, 
the  most  hopeful  of  any  that  have  preceded  it,  and  in 
some  form  I  fervently  trust  it  may  become  law.  Still, 
I  cannot  understand  the  drafting  which  opens  the  Bill 
with  two  Parliaments,  to  be  ultimately,  if  possible, 
united  in  one.  I  have  always  maintained  that  Ireland 
is  one  nation,  and  that  the  assertion  of  that  fact  is  the 
indispensable  basis  of  all  Irish  policy.  The  Bill  should 


LAST  WORDS  61 

have  begun  with  creating  a  real  Parliament  for  Ire- 
land. Then,  as  the  inevitable  pledge  to  preserve  the 
local  claims  of  the  North-East  counties,  their  Parlia- 
mentary representatives  should  form  a  statutory,  irre- 
movable standing  Committee  empowered  to  veto  any 
law,  order,  or  liability  imposed  on  their  local  areas, 
under  very  carefully-contrived  clauses  of  reasonable 
conditions.  Those  who  condemn  the  Bill — whether 
they  be  Unionists,  Liberals,  Nationalists,  or  Sinn 
Feiners — propose  no  other,  even  possible,  scheme. 
Their  futile  negative,  or  non  possumus,  is  rank 
mischief-making. 


I  trust  that  British  patience  and  coolness  will  be 
able  to  discuss  and  modify  the  Bill,  apart  from  our 
present  excitement  over  the  horrible  crimes  rife  in 
Ireland  to-day.  Let  us  remember  that  the  demand 
of  separation  is  an  entirely  recent  and  quite  artificial 
battle-cry,  concocted  by  literary  enthusiasts  and  noisy 
town-bred  talkers.  None  of  Ireland's  real  public  men 
ever  dreamed  of  it — neither  O'Connell,  nor  Butt,  nor 
Parnell,  nor  Redmond,  nor  any  Parliamentary  or 
Nationalist  Party  for  generations.  It  has  no  real  hold 
on  the  peasants,  for  all  but  the  most  ignorant  know  it 
would  be  their  ruin.  It  is  one  of  those  strident  catch- 
words which  suddenly  seize  the  Celtic  imagination,  as 
"  Prince  Charlie  "  did  the  Highlanders  in  1745,  and 
the  "  King  "  did  to  the  Bretons  in  France  in  1793. 
It  is  a  passing  delirium  which  has  no  hold  on  the  Irish 
nation.  It  may  destroy  the  offered  Home  Rule. 


62  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

But,  whether  it  passes  or  not,  this  last  effort  of  Britain 
to  restore  peace  must  convince  all  abroad,  even  Irish- 
men in  America  and  the  Dominions,  that  Britain  does 
not  oppress  Ireland,  but  offers  her  real  self-govern- 
ment ;  and  that  the  difficulties  which  bar  a  settlement 
are  wholly  caused  by  antagonism  between  Irishmen 
in  Ireland ;  and  that  is  an  ancient  quarrel  of  religion 
and  race,  bred  by  ignorance  deeper  than  any  other  in 
the  civilised  world  and  fomented  by  the  conspiracy  of 
a  treasonable  priesthood. 

****** 

The  crisis  on  the  Turkish  problem  adds  new  interest 
to  the  history  of  that  land,  especially  when  it  comes 
from  a  recognised  authority.  M.  Charles  Diehl,  of 
the  French  Institute,  Professor  in  the  University  of 
Paris,  who  has  devoted  so  many  years  of  study  to  the 
political  and  artistic  questions  of  the  former  Greek 
Empire  seated  at  Constantinople,  has  just  issued  a 
summary  of  the  history  from  the  first  Constantine  in 
330  A.D.  down  to  the  last  Constantine  XI.  in  1453. * 
In  some  250  pages  he  tells  us  with  masterly  concise- 
ness this  wonderful  story  of  the  rise,  expansion, 
decline,  and  fall  of  New  Rome,  over  its  evolution  of 
1,123  years,  a  story  hardly  inferior  in  fascination  to 
that  of  Old  Rome  in  a  similar  period.  With  a 
multiplicity  of  dates,  lists  of  one  hundred  Emperors, 
tables  of  chronology,  bibliography  of  literature,  maps 
of  the  City  and  the  Empire  at  its  extension  and 
decline,  he  gives  fifteen  photographs  of  buildings, 

»  Histoire  de  1' Empire  Byzantin,  Charles  Diehl.    A  Pioard,  12mo.  1919. 


LAST  WORDS  63 

drawings,  mosaics,  and  portraits.  The  volume  forms 
a  scientific  account  of  the  complex  civilisation  which 
the  Turks  under  Mahomet  the  Conqueror  over- 
whelmed exactly  467  years  ago. 


The  book  is  an  admirable  manual  for  the  student 
or  the  publicist,  as  it  concentrates  in  handy  form  the 
final  judgments  of  a  master  in  this  branch  of  history. 
But  it  is  impossible  in  the  limits  of  space  to  throw  over 
the  story  the  colour  of  personal  or  detailed  narrative. 
The  object  is  to  show  the  ultimate  conclusions  to  be 
drawn  on  these  manifold  problems.  And  this  is  done 
by  one  whose  authority  is  known  in  Europe  and 
America.  M.  Diehl  does  ample  justice  to  the  real 
continuity  of  Byzantine  civilisation,  its  glorious  his- 
tory as  the  maintainer  of  antique  literature,  art,  and 
organisation  under  the  barbarous  invasions  from 
North  or  East,  as  the  champion  of  Christendom  for 
eight  centuries,  as  the  missionary  and  teacher  of  the 
Slavonic  races,  and  the  source,  even  in  its  own  ruin, 
of  the  European  Renascence  of  learning.  He 
explains  the  vast  expansion  of  the  Empire  by 
Justinian,  who  ruled  the  lands  round  the  Mediter- 
ranean and  the  Euxine  from  Cadiz  to  the  Euphrates 
and  the  Arabian  deserts.  He  traces  the  long  story 
of  its  gradual  decline  over  nine  centuries — the  defeat 
of  the  Persians  and  the  fateful  battles  with  Arabs  and 
Turks — the  bitter  strife  over  image-wrorship — the  civil 
and  military  administration — the  development  of  art 
and  literature — the  jealous  enmity  of  the  Latins  and 


64  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

the  Roman  Church  which  led  to  the  breaking  up  of 
the  Byzantine  world  and  its  domination  by  Islam. 


I  take  much  interest  in  books  about  Sappho  and  in 
the  constant  attempts  at  the  hopeless  task  of  trans- 
lating the  fragments  which  survive.  Exactly  seventy 
years  ago  I  told  my  college  tutor — who  seemed  not 
to  have  read  them — that  "  the  world  has  never  pro- 
duced the  equal  of  these  odes  " ;  and  in  1892  I  wrote 
the  Life  of  Sappho  for  our  Calendar  of  Great  Men, 
calling  her  "  the  greatest  genius  who  has  ever 
appeared  amongst  women."  So  I  welcome  a  new 
verse  translation  of  the  odes,  including  the  newly- 
found  ode  to  Anactoria.  Dr.  Way,  who  has  done  so 
much  by  his  verse  translations  of  Homer  and  of  the 
Greek  dramatists,  has  now  ventured  on  the  impossible 
in  a  new  and  somewhat  startling  plan.1  He  seeks  to 
present  some  of  Sappho's  thoughts  in  intelligible 
sequence,  to  interest  the  general  reader  who  may 
know  nothing  of  the  Greek  fragments.  In  this  way 
he  knits  together  lines  which  he  thinks  belong  to  a 
connected  poem,  retaining  entire  the  famous  Sapphic 
stanzas,  and  some  others  which  seem  complete  as  they 
stand.  Thus  the  "Invocation  to  Aphrodite'  is 
made  up  of  four  fragments.  The  "  Leto  and 
Niobe  ' '  is  compacted  out  of  fourteen  fragments. 


i  SappJio  and  the  Vigil  of  Yentis,  translated  by  Arthur  S.  Way, 
D.Litt.,  Macmillan  and  Co.,  1920. 


LAST  WORDS  65 

Dr.  Way  uses  that  beautiful  little  volume  of  Mr. 
H.  T.  Wharton,  2nd  ed.  (D.  Stott,  1887).  We  find 
that  some  six  broken  and  detached  lines  in  the  original 
make  no  less  than  twenty  lines  in  Dr.  Way's 
"  Lament  for  Adonis."  It  is  very  ingenious.  I 
hesitate  to  say  more.  I  fear  scholars  who  love  these 
gems  of  Greek  lyricism  as  they  are  in  their  ruin,  like 
bits  from  the  Parthenon  marbles,  may  repeat  what 
Bentley  said  of  Pope's  Homer.  Many  of  these  Eng- 
lish verses  are  graceful.  Only  they  are  not  Sappho. 
Now,  as  J.  Addington  Symonds  so  well  put  it,  "  her 
every  word  has  a  peculiar  and  unmistakable  per- 
fume." It  has  the  royal  hall-mark  of  inimitable 
grace.  Poets  from  Catullus  down  to  Swinburne  have 
tried  to  give  us  that  perfume  in  their  own  tongue. 
Alas !  perfume  is  a  thing  that  will  not  bear  carriage. 
It  evaporates  in  the  act  of  transport.  Diamonds  are 
not  to  be  replaced  by  paste.  A  phrase  of  Sappho's, 
imbedded  in  an  old  grammarian's  lucubrations,  glows 
like  a  diamond  on  a  dark  floor. 


But  those  who  *  ;  have  no  use  '  '  for  Sappho  in  Greek 
—are  we  to  say  now  the  great  majority  of  future 
B.A.'s  and  M.A.'s?  —  I  advise  to  try  Dr.  Way's  com- 
posite version,  because  some  pathetic  and  exquisite 
lines  of  Sappho  in  the  original  seem  mere  common- 
place when  transposed  into  literal  English.  For 
instance,  the  four  lines  :— 


piv  «  (jsXiwa  —  7..T-X. 


66  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

The  Moon  has  set,  the  Pleiades  too,  etc. — seven- 
teen words  in  all — states  a  simple  fact  in  plain  Eng- 
lish, but  in  Greek  it  has  a  melody  and  a  poignant  thrill 
of  its  own.  Dr.  Way  has  to  use  thirty-two  words 
with  half  a  dozen  new  adjectives  and  ideas,  and  then 
the  four  words  with  which  it  ends  :  — 

'sYW  Se  nova  y.ateuScd — 
have  to  become  ten  words  : — 

"and  I — ah  me! — 
Lie  on  nay  couch  alone,  alone! " 

There  are  verse  translations  of  this  fragment  by  J. 
H.  Merivale  and  J.  A.  Symonds,  but  both  also 
expand  and  seek  to  decorate  the  Greek.  That 
simplicity,  reticence,  reserve  in  Greek  poetry  and  art 
make  both  inimitable.  And  of  all  poetry,  ancient 
or  modern,  that  is  the  secret  of  Sappho. 


Let  me  add  that  Dr.  Way,  who  is  always  ingenious, 
is  in  many  poems  graceful.      Take  No.  3  :  — 


y..t.X. 

"  The  Stars  that  round  the  Queen  of  Night 

Like  maids  attend  her, 
Hide  as  in  veils  of  mist  their  light 
When  she,  in  full-orbed  glory  bright 
O'er  all  the  earth  shines  from  her  height 
A  silver  splendour." 


LAST  WORDS  67 

Mr.  Wharton  quotes  versions  of  this  by  other 
poets  ;  but  they  all  use  twice  the  number  of  words  and 
many  superfluous  images.  Strangely  enough,  in  a 
parallel  line,  Tennyson,  after  Homer,  Iliad  viii.  555, 
writes  : — 

"  As  when  in  heaven  the  stars  about  the  Moon  look  beautiful —  " 

Now,  Sappho  says  that  the  stars  hide  their  bright 
light  around  the  full  moon.  This  is  more  true — and 
more  poetic.  The  glory  of  the  stars  is  when  the  moon 
is  down.  When  the  moon  is  full  the  stars  pale  and 
cease  to  show  their  beauty.  Homer  is  never 
"  precious,"  and  Tennyson  is  never  harsh.  But 
Sappho  is  always  at  once  "  precious  " — in  a  good 
sense — and  lovely. 


MAY 

-1920- 
V 

IN  the  almost  unprecedented  confusion  of  the  hour 
(April  loth,  1920) — the  Prime  Minister  at  sea 
— his  colleagues  hardly  less  so — the  state  of  Ire- 
land more  ghastly  than  ever,  and  the  new  Bill  stand- 
ing over  for  debate — U.S.A.  not  able  to  decide  if  it 
has  a  government  or  a  policy  at  all — the  Supreme 
Council  on  tour,  now  taking  villeggiatura  on  the 
Riviera — in  such  a  state  of  things,  the  wise  man  who 
takes  a  detached  view  of  public  affairs  in  a  remote 
retreat  will  withhold  his  judgment  until  better 
advised.  It  is  for  an  omniscient  Press,  writing  only 
twelve  hours  before  it  is  read  at  the  breakfast  table,  to 
tell  us  what  we  ought  to  think  about  it  all.  Here, 
down  in  Bath,  I  try  to  possess  my  soul  in  peace  with 
law,  philosophy,  and  books  of  the  day. 


A  portentous  sign  of  the  New  World  in  which  we 
live  is  the  suddenness  with  which  rooted  ideas  are 
abandoned  and  dominant  changes  are  made.  Re- 
forms that  have  been  fought  over  for  generations  pass 
almost  by  consent.  The  franchise  is  doubled ; 
Women  have  votes  and  even  exceed  the  male  voters ; 
Home  Rule  is  carried  by  Unionist  majorities  against 

68 


LAST  WORDS  69 

the  Liberals  ;  Labour  becomes  the  New  Rich,  and  the 
lower  Middle  Class,  whose  "  fixed  incomes  "  are  now 
"  sinking  incomes,"  become  the  New  Poor.  Bishops 
and  Deans  invite  Nonconformists  to  their  cathedrals. 
The  Minister  of  Education  welcomes  denomina- 
tionalism  to  public  schools.  The  House  of  Lords 
leads  the  way  in  Divorce.  Socialism  is  advocated  in 
academic,  literary,  and  aristocratic  quarters.  The 
biggest  Empire  on  earth  is  transformed  into  the  mil- 
lennium of  Labour.  And  the  biggest  Republic  on 
earth  goes  "  dry  "  and  retires  from  the  world. 


To  an  old  lawyer  one  of  the  most  amazing  changes 
is  the  welcome  that  has  been  given  to  the  splendid 
reform  of  the  law  of  Property  introduced  by  the  Lord 
Chancellor  with  so  much  eloquence  and  learning.  It 
is  the  greatest  and  most  useful  reform  in  our  Law 
that  has  been  seen  for  centuries.  As  an  old  con- 
veyancer and  Professor  of  Law  myself,  I  recognise 
the  benefits  it  will  confer  on  the  public,  if  not  on  the 
profession  as  well.  In  my  early  days  of  the  law  in  the 
'fifties,  I  remember  Lords  Lyndhurst,  Campbell, 
Westbury,  Cairns,  and  Selborne.  I  was  secretary 
to  the  Royal  Commission  of  1869  for  Digesting  the 
law ;  and  for  two  years  I  had  to  register  the  schemes 
of  famous  Judges  and  draft  those  of  Bethell,  who, 
whatever  his  other  defects,  had  a  real  passion  to  restore 
order  and  consistency  in  the  law  of  Property.  In  the 
present  Chancellor  law  reform  has  found  a  younger 
and  far  more  practical  enthusiast.  In  these  Notes  it 


70  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

is  impossible  to  discuss  a  Bill  of  250  pages,  with  its 
radical  abolition  of  antique  anomalies  and  its  judicious 
assimilation  of  the  law  of  Inheritance  and  of  Land. 
As  one  of  the  survivors  of  the  law-reformers  of  two 
generations,  I  trust  the  Bill  will  pass  with  due  amend- 
ments in  both  Houses.  It  is  one  of  the  best  products 
of  the  New  Time. 

****** 

Though  the  scope  of  the  Bill  is  so  large,  and  indeed 
so  startling  at  first  sight  to  the  old-fashioned  pundit, 
it  will  not  disturb  the  holders  of  important  landed 
estates,  nor  those  holders  of  other  property  who  take 
care  not  to  die  intestate.  The  really  great  changes  in 
the  law  introduced  by  the  Bill  concern  devolution  on 
intestacy.  Those  who  have  any  considerable  interest 
in  land  for  the  most  part  make  regular  wills,  if  not 
elaborate  entails.  Speaking  generally,  the  Bill  will 
not  affect  either  the  laws  of  Wills  or  of  Entail.  To 
get  rid  of  the  antique  feudal  survivals  will  remove 
many  a  trivial  nuisance,  but  need  not  concern 
the  general  public.  But  now  that  so  great  a  body  of 
landed  estates  are  being  broken  up,  and  so  many  small 
holdings  in  land  are  created,  it  is  necessary  to  provide 
for  intestacy.  The  assimilation  of  freeholds  to  lease- 
holds is  an  inevitable  result  of  the  immense  multiplica- 
tion of  small  freeholds,  as  also  is  the  simplification  of 
the  title  to  land.  The  Americans  who  adopted  our 
common  law  naturally  got  rid  of  feudal  traditions,  and 
called  interests  in  land  and  houses  real  estate.  The 
Bill  does  this  for  us. 


LAST  WORDS  71 

The  new  book  by  the  Regius  Professor  of  Modern 
History  at  Cambridge1  must  deeply  interest  all  who 
reflect  on  the  revolutionary  age  in  which  our  lot  is 
cast.  With  great  and  wide  learning  and  signal 
detachment  of  mind,  Professor  Bury  traces  the  his- 
tory of  the  Idea  of  Progress  as  the  accepted  law  of  the 
civilisation  of  mankind.  He  speaks  as  a  historian, 
not  as  apostle  of  any  school,  and  he  gives  us  an 
encyclopaedic  survey  of  the  successive  theories  by 
which  Progress  and  Civilisation  have  grown  to  be 
associated  in  men's  minds.  He  begins  his  survey  with 
the  Greeks — the  Athenian  poets — Aristotle  and 
Plato,  Roman  Epicureans  and  Stoics,  the  Mediaeval 
Church,  the  Renascence,  Descartes  and  Bacon, 
French  and  German  idealism,  the  revolutionists  :  and 
thence  he  comes  down  to  Evolution,  social  and 
physical,  Comte,  Darwin,  and  Spencer.  It  is  a  his- 
tory of  Philosophy  so  far  as  belief  in  a  law  of  progress 
is  a  factor  in  the  civilisation  of  Humanity.  The  book 
is  dedicated  to  Saint-Pierre,  Condorcet,  Comte, 
Spencer,  "  and  other  optimists." 


Like  all  vast  generalisations,  the  idea  of  human  Pro- 
gress and  the  conscious  sense  of  a  common  civilisation 
was  a  very  slow  movement,  built  up  gradually  by  par- 
tial enlightenment  and  fitfully  seen  by  poets  and 
thinkers  in  special  manifestations.  Bacon  and 
Descartes  and  their  followers  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury changed  the  whole  basis  of  speculative  thought ; 

i  The  Idea  of  Progress,  by  J.  B.  Bury  (Macmillan  and  Co.,  8vo.,  1920) 


72  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

Voltaire,  Diderot,  Turgot,  and  the  Encyclopaedists  in 
the  eighteenth  century,  enlarged  these  new  ideas  so 
as  to  touch  the  moral  and  social  condition  of  man.  But 
Professor  Bury  treats  the  Abbe  de  Saint-Pierre  about 
the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  famous  author 
of  the  "  Project  of  Perpetual  Peace,"  as  the  first  to 
imagine  a  Utopia  of  Progress  in  human  civilisation. 
Narrow  as  was  his  knowledge  of  history,  shallow  as 
was  his  sense  of  scientific  truth,  and  naif  as  were  his 
projects  to  secure  the  happiness  of  all,  the  generous 
Abbe's  heart  had  inspired  a  new  optimism  which 
dreamed  of  an  indefinite  progress  to  the  welfare  of 
man. 


It  is  with  Montesquieu,  Turgot,  Diderot,  and  Con- 
dorcet  that  the  idea  of  Progress  as  a  practicable 
enlargement  of  civilisation  first  became  a  true  social 
law,  as  part  of  a  scientific  philosophy  of  life.  With 
all  their  limitations  and  prejudices,  Montesquieu  and 
Voltaire  did  much  to  popularise  the  idea  of  a  philo- 
sophy of  history.  Diderot  founded  the  belief  of  man 
as  the  centre  of  our  World ;  the  Encyclopaedists  and 
the  Economists  in  various  ways  popularised  this  idea. 
Turgot  was  a  great  political  reformer  as  well  as  a  wise 
philosopher  of  life.  But  Condorcet  is  the  true 
prophet  of  Progress,  of  which  others  had  been  the 
intellectual  students.  And  it  is  Condorcet  whom  Pro- 
fessor Bury  honours  with  special  interest.  "  It  is 
amazing,'5  he  writes,  "  that  the  optimistic  Sketch  of 
the  Progress  of  the  Human  Mind  should  have  been 


LAST  WORDS  73 

composed  when  he  was  hiding  from  Robespierre  in 
1793  "  ;  and  that  it  was  written  without  books  was  "  a 
marvellous  tour  de  force.19  And  in  the  Dedication 
the  Professor  couples  the  name  of  Condorcet  with  that 
of  Comte,  as  indeed  Positivists  do  also. 


Mr.  Bury  passes  on  to  criticise  Rousseauism  and 
British  and  German  philosophers  who  had  visions  of 
Progress ;  but  he  considers  that  it  is  rather  from 
France  in  the  nineteenth  century  that  came 
systematic  theories  of  Progress  as  an  ascertainable  law 
of  civilisation.  The  more  definite  schools  which  made 
it  the  basis  of  schemes  to  mould  society  were  those 
founded  by  Saint-Simon  and  August  Comte.  With 
discernment  and  solid  evidence,  the  Professor  treats 
Saint-Simon  as  the  successor  of  Condorcet,  and  Comte 
as  the  successor  of  Saint-Simon.  It  was  Saint-Simon 
who  in  1814  transformed  Cordorcet's  idea  of  Pro- 
gress, meaning  a  growth  in  knowledge  and  intellectual 
sanity  into  a  far  wider  social  power  that  explained 
the  mediaeval  system  and  included  religion  as  an 
essential  social  force.  This  pregnant  conception  is 
certainly  the  foundation  of  Positivism ;  and,  as  Mr. 
Bury  says,  Comte  derived  more  from  Saint-Simon 
than  he  or  his  French  disciples  were  willing  to  admit. 
Comte  broke  with  Saint-Simon  at  the  age  of  twenty- 
two,  and  he  did  not  begin  his  System  of  Philosophy 
until  five  years  after  Saint-Simon's  death.  Un- 
systematic and  elusive  as  was  that  founder  of  a  sect  of 
Socialists,  the  Count  must  be  regarded  as  the  first  who 


74  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

propounded  a  dogmatic  scheme  of  general  social  Pro- 
gress. He  it  was  who  in  1814  wrote  :  "  The  golden 
age  is  not  behind  us,  but  in  front  of  us.  It  is  the 
perfection  of  social  order." 


But  Professor  Bury  naturally  treats  Comte  as  far 
the  most  important  and  systematic  apostle  of  the  idea 
of  Progress.  All  Positivists  will  accept  the  words 
with  which  he  opens  his  Chapter  XVI.  : — 

"  Auguste  Comte  did  more  than  any  preceding  thinker  to  establish 
the  idea  of  Progress  as  a  luminary  which  could  not  escape  men's 
vision.  The  brilliant  suggestions  of  Saint-Simon,  the  writings  of 
Bazard  and  Enfantin,  the  vagaries  of  Fourier,  might  be  dismissed 
as  curious  rather  than  serious  propositions,  but  the  massive  system 
wrought  out  by  Comte's  speculative  genius — his  organic  scheme  of 
human  knowledge,  his  elaborate  analysis  of  history,  his  new  science 
of  Sociology — was  a  great  fact  with  which  European  thought  was 
forced  to  reckon.  The  soul  of  this  system  was  Progress,  and  the 
most  important  problem  he  set  out  to  solve  was  the  determination  of 
its  laws." 


Professor  Bury  gives  a  thoughtful  sketch  of 
Comte's  philosophy  of  history  and  the  famous  "  law 
of  the  three  stages."  This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss 
his  account  of  the  Philosophic  Positive  (1830-1842). 
I  will  only  note  one  or  two  points.  Comte's  law  never 
implied  that  the  human  organism,  or  Society,  was  ever 
successively  in  one  or  other  of  the  three  stages ;  but 
that  individual  minds  and  branches  of  knowledge  pass 
through  three  phases  in  that  order  : — individual  minds 
and  societies  often  being  in  all  three  stages  simul- 
taneously as  to  different  matters.  I  remark  also  that 
Comte  did  treat  the  future  of  Asiatic  and  Polynesian 


LAST  WORDS  75 

races — Islam  and  Hindooism — in  his  Politique  Posi- 
tive (1854).  Again,  why  assume  that  men  in  the 
earliest  prehistoric  age  were  not  fetichists,  i.e., 
attributed  to  external  objects  what  they  themselves 
felt  or  feared  ?  The  races  who  killed  the  mammoth 
may  have  had  much  intelligence ;  but  what  do  we 
know  of  their  theories  about  Nature  other  than  such  as 
we  find  in  primitive  people?  And,  even  if  the  tribes 
who  inhabited  European  caves  had  evolved  a  system 
of  Theology,  as  Mr.  Bury  suggests,  may  they  not  have 
had  predecessors,  and  again,  are  they  the  true 
ancestors  of  ourselves  to-day  ?  There  may  have  been 
a  huge  gap  in  the  glacier  ages. 


Professor  Bury  limits  his  study  of  Comte  to  the 
Philosophic,  and  does  not  seem  to  know  the  Politique 
Positive  (1851-1854,  English  translation  and  analysis, 
1875-1877).  But  Comte's  philosophy  of  history  and 
of  progress  is  most  fully  stated  in  the  third  volume  of 
the  Politique  (1853).  Many  points  in  the  Professor's 
criticism  would  be  cleared  up  by  referring  to  this  work 
and  to  Dr.  J.  H.  Bridges'  Illustrations  of  Positivism 
(second  edition,  1915).  If  Professor  Bury  would  turn 
to  the  New  Calendar  of  Great  Men  (of  which  a  new 
edition  is  in  the  press),  he  will  find  about  seventy  of 
the  philosophers  and  men  of  science,  whom  he  men- 
tions, treated  in  the  sense  of  Comte's  philosophy  of 
history,  and  largely  in  complete  agreement  with  his 
own  views.  Reference  to  English  students  of  Comte 
would  show  that  they,  at  least,  never  attribute  to  his 


76  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

writings  any  doctrine  of  finality,  that  they  recognise 
many  of  his  speculations  as  ideals  to  meditate  on 
rather  than  to  act  out  in  the  immediate  present,  that 
they  repudiate  any  idea  of  orthodoxy  and  sacer- 
dotalism, that  they  in  their  own  society  and  the  prac- 
tice of  their  lives  reject  the  names  of  "  sect,"  of 
*'  Comtism,"  of  "  authority  ";  indeed,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  profess  and  claim  a  full  measure  of  personal 
liberty  of  thought  and  action. 


Mr.  Bury  then  treats  of  the  theory  of  Evolution 
and  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species  (1859)  as  having  intro- 
duced the  third  stage  in  the  idea  of  Progress.  And, 
as  he  says, 

"  the  ablest  and  most  influential  development  of  the  argument  from 
evolution  to  Progress  was  the  work  of  Spencer.  He  extended  the 
principle  of  evolution  to  sociology  and  ethics,  and  was  the  most  con- 
spicuous interpreter  of  it  in  an  optimistic  sense." 

The  summary  of  Spencer's  Synthetic  Philosophy 
(1862),  with  which  Mr.  Bury  practically  closes  his 
study,  will  be  accepted  by  most  of  Spencer's 
followers,  though  they  may  not  accept  the  criticisms 
with  which  it  is  followed.  The  Professor  evidently 
regards  Spencer  as  the  most  resolute  upholder  of 
philosophic  optimism. 

"  The  synthesis  of  the  world-process  which  these  volumes  lucidly  and 
persuasively  developed,  probably  did  more  than  any  other  work,  at 
least  in  England,  both  to  drive  home  the  significance  of  the  doctrine 
of  evolution  and  to  raise  the  doctrine  of  Progress  to  the  rank  of  a 
commonplace  truth  in  popular  estimation,  an  axiom  to  which  political 
rhetoric  might  effectively  appeal." 


LAST  WORDS  77 

The  interesting  question  then  arises  :  How  far  does 
Professor  Bury  himself  believe  in  Progress?  Is  he 
one  of  the  "  other  optimists  "  to  whom,  with  the 
leading  Four,  his  book  is  dedicated?  We  search  the 
Preface  and  the  Epilogue  ;  and  we  must  admit  that  we 
find  no  conclusive  answer.  He  declares  that  his  pre- 
sent attempt  is  "  a  purely  historical  inquiry."  On 
the  other  hand,  he  raises  the  problem  of  Progress  to 
a  dominant  moral  and  even  religious  power.  He 
finds  that  the  hope  of  Progress  has  reformed  the 
ethical  code  of  the  Western  world.  The  hope  of  an 
ultimate  happy  state  on  this  planet  to  be  enjoyed  by 
future  generations  has  replaced,  as  a  social  power,  the 
hope  of  felicity  in  another  world.  Progress  seems  to 
be  a  counter-balance  to  the  idea  of  Providence  and  the 
dogma  of  personal  immortality  in  Heaven.  The  Pro- 
fessor has  spent  an  immense  amount  of  learning  and 
of  thought  on  the  genesis  of  this  idea.  He  sees  how 
ethics  and  creed  are  largely  involved  in  it.  Is  it  a 
great  truth  :  is  it  an  idolum  saeculi?  He  leaves  the 
answer  to  us.  As  a  last  word  he  asks — if  the  law  of 
Progress  comes  out  of  the  law  of  Evolution,  may  it 
not  be  itself  evolved  into  some  other  unknown  law  of 
change  ?  Optimists  will  reply  :  Perhaps  it  may  be ; 
and  we  will  leave  the  infinite  seons  to  come  to  settle 
that  question  in  their  own  good  time. 


All  those  who  enjoyed  the  society  of  Henry  James, 
and  the  far  wider  range  of  his  readers  all  over  Europe 
and  America,  will  be  glad  to  see  the  letters  which  he 


78  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

wrote  to  his  family  and  his  friends,  and  which  have 
now  been  edited  with  skill  and  care  by  Mr.  Percy 
Lubbock.1  They  will  reveal  to  the  world  without  the 
charm  of  his  personality  and  a  nature  of  rare  affection- 
ateness,  brimming  over  with  generous  sympathy  for 
all  forms  of  beauty  and  of  intelligence,  yet  all  the 
while  endowed  with  an  inexhaustible  spirit  of  subtle 
observation.  These  letters  to  parents,  brother,  sister, 
nephews,  nieces,  cousins,  and  aunts,  give  us  a  bright 
picture  of  New  England  family  love  and  companion- 
ship which  has  a  primitive  freshness  in  the  air  of  our 
crowded,  hustling,  standardised  British  life.  Here 
we  have  a  cultured  and  keen  American  mind  studying 
British  ways  and  the  ever-revolving  scene  of  old 
Europe  with  thorough  detachment,  as  if  it  were  being 
studied  from  another  continent.  The  young  na'if 
traveller  from  New  York  descends  upon  us,  as  it 
might  be  from  Mars,  all  eyes,  all  nature's  child,  keen 
to  get  to  the  heart  of  old  Europe,  finding  how  strange 
and  complex  it  is,  and  yet  with  such  culture  in  his 
brain  and  such  sympathy  in  his  heart  that  it  fills  him 
with  intense  and  growing  interest.  He  is  among  us 
— long  not  at  all  of  us — then  he  passes  to  view  the 
charm  of  Italy  and  the  esprit  of  France.  But  Europe, 
England,  London,  Kent,  grasp  his  soul  more  and 
more.  Wilsonian  neutrality  in  the  great  war  revolts 
him,  almost  kills  him.  At  last  he  is  wholly  with  us 
on  the  side  of  defending  civilisation.  In  July,  1915, 

1  The  Letters  of   Henry  James,  selected  and  edited  by  Percy 
Lubbock  (Macmillan  and  Co.,  2  vols.,  8vo.,  1920). 


LAST  WORDS  79 

he  is  naturalised,  Mr.  Asquith  and  Mr.  Gosse  being 
two  of  his  sponsors.  In  Februarj*,  1916,  whilst  the 
Republic  was  still  an  unfriendly  neutral,  he  dies  as  a 
British  subject  and  O.M. 


Until  the  last  this  loving,  generous,  gentle  soul  of 
his  seems  never  to  have  been  touched  by  any  public 
care,  seems  hardly  aware  of  war,  revolution,  or  policy, 
either  in  America  or  in  Britain,  until  the  great  up- 
heaval of  1914  overwhelmed  his  hitherto  tranquil  spirit 
of  detachment  and  neutrality.  He  knew  the  leaders ; 
he  was  in  the  whirl  of  our  politics ;  nothing  of  them 
touched  him,  hardly  gave  him  a  moment's  thought. 
Again,  with  a  nature  of  such  tenderness,  with  streams 
of  affection  flowing  from  his  pen-tip  to  scores  of 
"  dearest  Emilys,"  "  dearest  Betsys  " — they  cannot 
all  be  cousins — this  love  for  beautiful  and  gracious 
women  never  seems  to  have  got  concentrated  upon 
any  one,  even  for  a  time.  In  all  these  forty-six  years 
of  a  correspondence  brimming  over  with  loving  words 
to  men  and  to  women  there  is  not  the  faintest  trace  of 
any  supreme  affection.  This  subtle  master  of  the 
human  heart  lets  us  see  no  scintilla  of  personal 
romance  of  his  own.  Let  those  who  care  to  read 
between  the  lines  of  these  letters  try  if  they  can  dis- 
cover any  such. 


These  Letters  suggest  two  points — first  as  to  the 
mental  habit  and  secondly  as  to  the  style  of  Henry 


80  XOVISSIMA  VERBA 

James.  He  seems  to  close  his  mind  resolutely  against 
any  interest  in  warring  causes  and  social  movements. 
In  a  letter  of  advice  to  his  nephew  he  says,  in  1899, 
"  Thank  God  I've  no  opinions — not  even  on  the 
Dreyfus  case.  I'm  more  and  more  only  aware  of 
things  as  a  more  or  less  mad  panorama,  phantas- 
magoria and  dime  museum."  And  there  is  more  in 
this  Carlyle  vein.  But  this  devotion  to  Art  broke 
down  in  the  Great  War  in  1914.  Again,  the  letters 
prove  his  intense  modernity  of  mind.  Not  only  will 
he  put  aside  the  clash  of  parties  and  nations,  but  he 
turns  with  indifference  from  the  Past.  There  is  no 
trace  that  he  ever  seriously  cared  for  history,  or  lived 
in  the  past — even  in  Rome,  or  Paris,  in  Florence, 
Venice,  or  Touraine.  In  each  he  is  the  American 
tourist,  keen  about  art  and  society.  He  tells  Mr. 
Gosse,  in  1900,  that  he  hungers  and  thirsts  for  "a 
gleam  of  reflection  of  the  life  we  live,  of  artistic  or 
plastic  intelligence  of  it,  something  one  can  say  Yes 
or  No  to,  as  discrimination,  perception,  observation, 
rendering." 


This  passion  for  the  present  visible  scene  of  modern 
life  reacts  upon  his  culture  and  on  his  style.  To  read 
these  Letters  one  would  think  that  he  was  indifferent 
to,  almost  ignorant  of,  the  great  literature  of  the  past. 
In  a  flood  of  correspondence  with  men  of  letters, 
students,  and  critics,  there  is  a  great  deal  about 
modern  romance,  drama,  and  art,  but  hardly  a  single 
word  about  our  great  English  writers  in  verse  or  prose. 


LAST  WORDS  81 

I  find  nothing  about  Wordsworth,  Cowper,  Gray, 
Burns,  Goldsmith,  Gibbon,  Fielding,  Richardson, 
Sterne,  Dryden,  Pope,  not  even  about  Milton  or 
Spenser.  He  must  have  read  them ;  but  they  seem 
not  to  have  been  infused  into  his  mind,  and  they  cer- 
tainly did  not  form  his  style.  If  he  had  really  studied 
the  Letters  of  Cowper,  of  Gray,  of  Walpole,  would 
he  have  written  these,  or  the  curiously  tesselated  and 
mystically  interwoven  passages  in  so  many  of  his 
graceful  romances  ?  If  he  had  been  born  and  trained 
in  Old — not  in  New — England  his  mind  would  have 
had  a  broader  range,  and  his  style  would  have  had  a 
simpler  and  an  easier  flow. 


But  let  us  not  overlook  the  many  bright  and  sug- 
gestive pictures  of  illustrious  Victorians.  What 
loving  portraits  of  Burne- Jones,  of  William  Morris 
and  of  his  wife — "  a  grand  synthesis  of  all  the  Pre- 
Raffaelite  pictures  " — of  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward,  of 
Turgenev,  of  Stevenson,  of  the  Eliot  Nortons,  of 
George  Meredith,  of  Gladstone,  of  Ruskin,  of  George 
Eliot,  of  Paul  Bourget,  and  Alphonse  Daudet.  In 
this  age  of  caricatures,  diaries,  and  abominable  indis- 
cretions, how  sweet,  how  generous,  how  artless  are  all 
these  revelations  of  a  very  affectionate  and  subtle  spirit 
poured  out  in  such  volubility  to  the  men  and  women 
of  a  large  and  distinguished  family  from  New  Eng- 
land, and  to  such  a  circle  of  cultured  people,  both 
English  and  foreign.  Henry  James,  though  domi- 


82  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

ciled  and  naturalised  in  Britain,  was  still  American 
from  first  to  last.  The  simplicity,  the  lovability,  the 
graceful  enfantiUage,  of  his  open  heart  are  a  refreshing 
relief  from  our  national  morgue. 


JUNE 

-1920- 


VI 


LET  us  face  the  facts.  The  relations  between  the 
Three  Great  Powers  and  the  League  of 
Nations  are  not  only  anomalous  and  confusing, 
but  they  show  the  impotence  of  the  Covenant  for  all 
effective  purposes.  The  Powers  refer  a  mandate  on 
the  Baltic  Powers  to  the  League — which  naturally 
refuses  it,  as  having  neither  authority,  nor  arms,  nor 
means.  The  Three  and  the  League  are  really  the 
same  body  under  different  names ;  but  they  act  as  if 
they  were  rival  and  even  unfriendly  Powers.  The 
Three  have  great  armies  in  the  field  and  great  nations 
in  their  hands.  The  League  has  nothing  but  costly 
officials,  commissions,  and  resolutions.  To  protect  a 
small  State  it  has  no  more  real  power  than  the  Society 
for  Protection  of  Women  and  Children.  It  is  now 
certain  that  America  will  never  work  out  in  Europe 
the  Wilsonian  Covenant.  Without  America  the 
League  is  bankrupt.  Let  us  face  facts,  and  cease  to 
chase  a  Utopian  mirage.  Our  three  Allied  nations 
must  do  the  best  they  can  to  clear  up  the  urgent 
problems  which  threaten  us  all  with  ruin. 

****** 

83 


84  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

It  is  not  for  us  to  judge  the  political  problems  and 
parties  within  the  Republic.  There  was  much  to 
justify  both  sides  in  the  deadlock  between  President 
and  Senate — Democrat  and  Republican.  It  is 
entirely  for  them  to  settle  things  in  their  own  way  in 
their  own  home.  But  see  the  result  of  the  deadlock 
on  the  world  around  !  It  is  plain  that  the  Covenant 
and  the  Fourteen  Points  were  the  American  con- 
dition on  which  the  Republic  brought  its  enormous 
weight,  its  wealth,  its  inexhaustible  armies  and 
material  resources,  into  the  war.  But  for  that 
Covenant,  Britain,  France,  and  Italy  would  have 
made  a  quick,  plain,  direct  Peace  with  their  enemies 
in  some  form.  But  the  terms  of  American  interven- 
tion had  entirely  transformed  the  whole  situation. 
The  civilised  nations  had  been  banded  into  a  moral 
Alliance.  Their  potential  force,  as  well  as  their 
material  force,  as  such  an  Alliance,  was  overwhelm- 
ing. The  Peace  had  been  bound  up  with  the  Ameri- 
can Utopia.  And  fifty  races  in  Europe  and  in  Asia 
were  fired  with  the  passion  of  self-assertion  at  the  call 
of  the  biggest  of  the  Entente  Powers.  Then  the 
domestic  quarrel  in  the  Republic  broke  out.  It  with- 
drew both  in  action  and  in  council.  It  left  its  deserted 
comrades  in  war  to  deal  with  the  confusion  of  Europe 
and  to  pacify  the  furious  hopes  and  hates  of  races. 


The  Republic  withdrew  in  action  :  it  did  not  with- 
draw in  words.  Refusing  to  meet  in  Council,  refus- 
ing men,  money,  or  goods  to  its  own  creation,  the 


LAST  WORDS  85 

League  of  Nations,  it  did  not  cease  to  criticise,  to 
complain,  and  to  interfere,  both  officially  and  un- 
officially, in  the  doings  of  its  late  Allies,  and  in  the 
execution  of  its  own  Treaty.  It  did  not  ratify  its  own 
Treaty,  yet  it  condemned  the  Allies  who  have  ratified 
theirs.  The  President  would  do  nothing,  meet  no 
one,  discuss  nothing ;  yet  he  claimed  to  dictate  to  us 
his  wishes  or  his  censures  from  his  sick-room.  Sena- 
tors, mayors,  the  Press,  bark  and  growl  about  British 
attempts  to  settle  convulsions  in  the  world — which 
the  Republic  will  not  touch,  inasmuch  as  "it  passes 
by  on  the  other  side."  And  the  journals  and  even 
important  public  men,  use  Ireland,  Egypt,  India, 
and  the  sea,  as  counters  in  their  own  party  game. 
We  well  know  the  supreme  necessity  of  a  good  under- 
standing between  our  peoples — the  awful  conse- 
quences of  a  rupture.  And  our  public  men  and  our 
Press  bear  insults  and  injuries  in  silence.  But  a  man, 
wholly  independent  of  any  party  or  place,  a  man  who 
has  for  a  lifetime  honoured  the  greatness  and  destinies 
of  the  Republic,  may  fairly  ask — in  this  terrible  hour 
when  civilisation  is  in  sore  straits — is  it  an  honourable 
part  of  so  glorious  a  nation  to  jeer  at  the  Good 
Samaritan  whilst  it  prefers  to  "  pass  by  on  the  other 
side"? 


That  the  League  of  Nations  formally  declines  the 
mandate  to  protect  and  save  Armenia,  is  a  cruel  blow 
to  the  hopes  and  promises  which  for  years  have 
buoyed  up  that  piteous  people.  After  all  that  has 


86  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

been  said  and  done  by  Britons  and  Americans  from 
the  time  of  Gladstone  and  Salisbury,  it  looks  like 
weakness  or  bad  faith  to  surrender  these  remnants 
of  an  ancient  race  to  their  oppressors,  or  rather 
to  their  assassins.  Yet  it  cannot  be  weakness 
or  bad  faith.  It  is  Fate.  Who  can  undertake 
such  a  distant  and  impracticable  task,  if  the  League 
of  Nations  declares  that  it  has  no  power  for 
such  an  undertaking?  What  a  mockery  is  this 
League  which  in  its  consolidated  might  of  the  Great 
Powers  was  to  protect  the  small  weak  States.  What 
could  have  been  done  at  the  end  of  1918  is  impossible 
now.  Where  are  the  armies  that  can  save  this 
ancient,  Christian,  civilised,  half -massacred  race,  sur- 
rounded by  savage  enemies  in  far-off  Asia,  whom  our 
own  Musulman  fellow-citizens  will  not  permit  us  to 
crush  or  curb,  as  it  would  be  disrespectful  to  the  suc- 
cessor of  their  Prophet  ? 


Surely  the  awful  prospect  of  the  final  extermina- 
tion of  a  Christian  nation  must  appeal  to  the  great 
American  people  who  for  generations  have  worked 
so  hard  and  promised  so  much  to  help  the  oppressed 
races  in  Turkey.  American  missionaries  and  philan- 
thropists have  done  more  for  Armenians  than  any 
others  in  Europe.  It  was  the  American  President 
and  American  representatives  who,  during  the  war 
and  the  Conferences,  most  passionately  pleaded  for  a 
League  of  Nations  to  protect  the  weak  peoples  in  the 


LAST  WORDS  87 

East.  The  belief  of  the  world  was  that,  whatever 
other  task  the  Republic  undertook,  the  mandate  to 
save  Armenia  would  be  their  obvious  duty.  And  now 
an  internal  dispute  seems  to  reject  that  and  every 
European  cause  until  after  March,  1921,  at  earliest. 
The  League  of  Nations  which  Europe  accepted  at  the 
urgent  insistence  of  U.S.A.  is  powerless  in  the 
absence  of  her  vast  resources  in  energy,  in  wealth,  in 
men.  And  the  strident  appeal  to  self-determination, 
which  the  President  fired  as  a  subterranean  mine 
below  the  heaving  crust  of  European  nationalities,  has 
roused  such  storms  of  hope,  ambition,  and  strife  that 
the  victorious  Powers  are  over-strained  in  efforts  to 
satisfy  or  control  them. 

These  promises  to  weak  peoples,  these  potential 
mandates,  seem  about  to  breed  endless  trouble  and 
strife.  I  view  with  anxiety  our  proffers  to  Serbia, 
Greece,  Syria,  and  Mesopotamia,  as  well  as  that  to 
Armenians.  One  of  the  worst  imbroglios  is  that  of 
Palestine.  I  fear  that  Mr.  Balfour's  promise  to  the 
Jews  was  even  more  dangerous  than  his  treaty  with 
Italy.  By  all  means  let  as  many  Jewish  patriots  as 
desire  it,  go  to  Palestine,  purchase  estates  or  farms, 
and  settle  there.  But,  as  the  country  is  now  occu- 
pied by  its  ancient  people,  Musulmans,  Christians, 
and  others,  with  a  very  small  Jewish  minority,  the 
idea  of  creating  in  it  a  new  Jewish  Nation  is  non- 
sense. The  Allies  and  the  Jews  themselves  are 
puzzled  and  divided  about  what  Zionism  means. 
There  has  been  some  ridiculous  * '  hot  air  ' ' — which 
we  might  call  Zangwillism — which  talks  about  dis- 


88  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

possessing  the  Arab  and  non- Jewish  population,  even 
by  force,  and  of  constituting  a  Maccabean  kingdom 
according  to  the  "  Jewish  Peril."  But  even  the 
more  modest  Zionism  of  bringing  many  Jews  to 
Palestine  is  a  fanciful  Sinn  Fein  kind  of  dream.  And 
I  hope  that  our  Government  will  give  no  more 
encouragement  to  the  nonsense  of  creating  any  sort 
of  Jewish  nation. 


I  am  invited  by  the  Zionist  Central  body  to  sign 
and  support  their  Appeal  to  have  Palestine  made  the 
Jewish  National  Home.  Of  all  the  mischievous  and 
absurd  cries  about  Races,  this  is  the  worst.  Jews 
may  be  a  race,  or  a  sect:  they  are  not  a  nation.  They 
have  a  religion  of  their  own,  and  inherit  physical, 
moral,  and  intellectual  qualities.  But  that  does  not 
make  a  nation ;  much  less  does  it  give  a  right  to  turn 
other  races  out  of  their  own  homes.  Catholics  do  not 
pretend  to  be  a  nation,  nor  do  they  claim  to  turn  all 
inhabitants  out  of  the  Papal  States  of  the  Church. 
Gypsies  are  not  a  nation  :  nor  do  they  claim  to  return 
and  drive  the  Fellaheen  out  of  Egypt.  All  people 
with  red  hair  or  long  noses,  or  all  the  Smiths  and 
Joneses  in  the  Empire  or  America,  might  as  well 
pretend  to  be  a  "nation";  or  the  Danes  claim  to 
return  to  their  ancestral  homes  in  East  Anglia.  Jews 
not  only  are  not  a  nation ;  but  they  have  been  for 
2,000  years  citizens  of  almost  every  nation  on  the 
earth.  They  have  been  active  members  of  countless 
political  nationalities  for  ages — especially  of  British, 


LAST  WORDS  89 

American,  French,  Italian,  and  German.    They  are 
no  more  a  nation  than  Buddhists  or  Quakers. 


And  what  right  have  they  to  Palestine  ?  More  than 
1,000  years  before  Christ  they  savagely  overran  that 
land  and  massacred  its  native  peoples.  If  race  is  de- 
cisive, it  belongs  to  the  remnants  of  the  Hittites, 
Amorites,  Canaanites,  Perizzites,  Hivites,  and 
Jebusites.  History  records  no  more  ruthless  exter- 
mination than  the  story  in  Holy  Writ  how  they 
destroyed  man  and  woman,  young  and  old,  ox,  sheep, 
and  ass — all  except  their  friend,  Rahab,  the  harlot. 
Nothing  more  horrible  is  recorded  of  Attila  and  his 
Huns,  or  of  Wilhelm  and  his  "  Huns."  A  few  cen- 
turies later  they  were  carried  off  as  slaves ;  and,  ex- 
cept for  short  intervals,  they  never  recovered  the 
country  as  a  nation,  but  lived  in  it  as  scattered  exiles. 
In  Greek  and  Roman  times  they  were  only  refugees, 
who  had  no  national  or  territorial  rights.  In  the 
Gospel  age  the  inhabitants  of  all  Syria  were  largely 
Greek  or  Roman  in  race,  in  allegiance,  in  language, 
and  in  civilisation.  And  now,  because  of  this  original 
massacre  and  because  they  crucified  the  Founder  of 
Christianity,  this  Arab  tribe,  which  has  been  wander- 
ing about  the  world  for  two  thousand  years  and  has 
lost  all  sense  of  common  language,  or  political  unity, 
or  agricultural  habits,  summons  the  Supreme  Council 
to  place  it  as  "a  nation,"  and  imitate  Joshua  in  turn- 
ing out  the  lawful  inhabitants.  Many  rash  promises 


90  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

were  made  in  the  stress  of  war,  and  we  have  too  many 
mandates  as  it  is. 


I  cannot  pass  over  the  Centenary  of  Herbert 
Spencer  without  a  word  to  express  my  honour  to  the 
most  important  English  philosopher  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  I  knew  him  well  for  more  than  forty  years  ; 
I  worked  with  him  in  many  a  public  cause ;  I  carried 
on  controversies  with  him,  which  happily  ended  in 
personal  sympathies;  and  I  have  published  in  more 
than  one  book,  and  especially  in  my  Oxford  Herbert 
Spencer  Lecture,  1905,  my  own  estimate  of  his  sys- 
tem of  philosophy.  I  am  well  aware  that  the 
twentieth  century  turns,  with  a  perhaps  inevitable 
reaction,  from  those  whom  the  nineteenth  century 
honoured.  But  the  mature  judgment  of  the  future 
will  do  justice  to  the  profound  powers  of  mind  and 
the  inexhaustible  industry  which  Spencer  brought  to 
his  task  in  a  long  life  of  devotion  to  intellectual  and 
moral  progress.  His  signal  achievement  was  to  have 
been  the  only  English  thinker,  since  the  crude 
attempt  of  Bacon,  who  had  systematically  worked  out 
a  Synthesis  of  general  knowledge. 

****** 

This  is  so  vast,  so  rare,  and  yet  so  dominant  an 
achievement  that,  even  if  later  knowledge  reveals  its 
errors  and  its  incompleteness,  it  takes  a  place  of  its 
own  in  the  history  of  human  thought.  In  a  new  book 
Professor  Bury  has  shown  how  a  synthetic  theory  of 
civilisation  reacts  on  moral,  political,  and  religious 


LAST  WORDS  91 

ideas  from  age  to  age ;  and  he  very  justly  groups  to- 
gether as  the  founders  of  our  law  of  Progress  Con- 
dorcet,  Comte,  and  Spencer.  It  is  Spencer,  in  fact, 
who  alone  in  the  English-speaking  world  has  de- 
veloped the  philosophy  which  on  the  Continent  arose 
after  the  convulsion  that  closed  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. Our  great  English  men  of  physical  science  and 
of  moral  and  social  science  have  worked  more  or  less 
on  specialist  and  limited  fields,  where  conclusive 
accepted  results  are  possible.  Spencer  is  still  "  our 
one  synthetic  philosopher."  The  attempt  to  frame  a 
real  concatenation  of  scientific  and  moral  ideas  has 
effects  so  pervading  and  constructive  that  it  retains 
its  permanent  power  over  subsequent  thought, 
although  in  many  parts  its  solutions  are  not  accepted 
as  final.  Thus  Spencer  will  rank  with  Bacon,  Locke, 
Hume,  Adam  Smith,  and  Darwin. 


I  am  much  interested  in  the  very  timely  book  just 
published  by  Mr.  Hartley  Withers.1  He  is  an 
economist  of  great  experience  and  of  signal  independ- 
ence of  judgment ;  and  he  has  written  a  lucid  and 
balanced  estimate  of  the  current  schemes  of  industrial 
reform.  It  is  a  manual  of  the  case  for  Capitalism, 
which  should  be  invaluable  were  it  taken  to  heart  both 
by  employers  and  employed,  for  it  is  by  no  means  a 
partisan  defence  of  Capital,  of  which  it  frankly  states 
the  evils  and  the  defects  under  present  conditions. 
For  its  evils  and  its  defects  he  proposes  social,  moral, 

1  The  Case  for  Capitalism  (Eveleigh  Nash  Co.).  pp.  255. 


92  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

and  practical  remedies ;  but  after  a  close  examination 
of  various  forms  of  Communism,  State  Socialism, 
Bureaucratic,  and  Guild  Socialism,  he  shows  the  solid 
advantages  of  a  recognised  system  of  Capitalism  over 
all  the  tyranny,  monopoly,  and  chaos  which  must  re- 
sult from  any  of  the  familiar  schemes  of  eliminating 
Capital  by  a  vast  social  and  economic  revolution. 


He  opens  his  study  with  a  chapter  on  the  "  Weak- 
ness and  Strength  of  Capitalism  ' ' ;  and  in  this  he 
states  fully  the  ordinary  attacks  made  on  it,  and  then 
the  gain  to  freedom  and  general  utility  which  it  con- 
fers on  the  mass  of  the  citizens  in  a  normal  de- 
mocracy. There  is  another  chapter  on  the  "  Achieve- 
ments of  Capitalism  "  in  conferring  on  the  public  the 
enormous  improvements  in  human  life  in  recent 
times,  as  compared  with  the  oppression  and  sufferings 
of  former  generations — and  this  in  spite  of  all  that 
rhetoric  can  declaim  as  to  still  unremedied  abuses. 
In  the  incalculable  multiplicity  of  modern  life  the 
demagogue  can  find  a  ready  text.  The  true  reformer 
in  politics  or  in  economics  must  patiently  survey  the 
entire  field  and  set  off  local  and  partial  evils  against 
the  widespread  ruin  that  yawns  in  the  darkness  of  an 
unknown  abyss  of  social  upheaval.  We  can  all  see 
how  a  crazy  social  gospel  of  new  industry  converts  a 
magnificent  and  populous  city  into  the  dying  wilder- 
ness of  Leningrad. 


LAST  WORDS  93 

With  inexorable  logic  Mr.  Withers  exposes  the 
mendacious  sophists  who  tell  excitable  workmen  that 
the  "  capitalist  is  a  thief  "  ;  and  the  card-sharper  trick 
of  Karl  Marx  that  Capital  robs  Labour  of  the  "  sur- 
plus value."  This  is  the  poison  seed  that  has  grown 
up  as  Bolshevism.  Every  sane  economist  knows  that 
' t  profit ' '  earned  over  the  wages  paid  out  usually  has 
to  be  devoted  (1)  to  the  debts  due  for  rent,  plant, 
materials,  and  capital  lent  for  user,  (2)  to  reserve  and 
fresh  industrial  undertakings,  and  (3)  in  a  very  minor 
degree,  often  very  moderate,  to  the  personal  use  of 
the  capitalist.  Without  No.  (1)  there  would  have 
been  no  work  produced  and  no  wages  at  all  paid ; 
without  No.  (2)  there  would  be  constant  stagnation 
and  no  increase  of  business  or  wider  employment. 
And  yet  Labour  leaders  allow  ignorant  workmen  to 
be  gulled  into  fancying  that  the  entire  "  surplus 
profit"  is  (a)  their  own  product  and  property,  and 
(b)  is  plundered  by  the  capitalist.  Labour  will  never 
be  fit  to  form  a  Government  until  it  has  induced  the 
working  masses  to  put  aside  this  silly  falsehood  of 
Marx. 


After  showing  the  radical  antagonism  between 
State  Socialism  and  Guild  Socialism,  and  the  repudia- 
tion of  State  bureaucracy  by  both,  Mr.  Withers  ends 
with  an  admirable  chapter  on  "  Capitalism  and 
Freedom."  Though  Capitalism  has  its  own  defects, 
it  protects  citizens  against  the  oppressive  bondage  in- 
evitable in  every  known  form  of  Communism, 


94  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

Socialism,  or  Guilds.  Guilds  could  only  live  by  en- 
forcing rigid  monopolies.  Socialism  cannot  wriggle 
itself  out  of  bureaucratic  despotism.  Socialists  and 
Guildists  regard  the  general  public  as  mere  "  fodder  " 
for  their  fads.  The  "consumers"  mean  the  whole 
commonwealth  except  themselves,  and  are  to  be  their 
bond-slaves,  to  buy  what  they  tell  them,  do  what  they 
are  ordered  to  do,  and  pay  the  prices  that  they  fix. 
Socialism  and  Guildism  are  Sinn  Fein  in  working 
clothes.  Ireland  and  Russia  to-day  are  the  Paradise 
of  the  "top-dog."  As  to  workmen  showing  rare 
zeal  for  the  State,  Mr.  Withers  tells  us  how  the 
Tommies  in  camp  laughed  when  he  asked  if  they 
found  "fatigue  work"  so  stimulating.  Altogether 
Mr.  Withers'  book  is  a  wholesome  manual  of  rational 
industry.  The  only  part  of  the  case  for  Capitalism 
which  he  omits  is  that  of  the  moral  value  and  the 
moral  duty  of  Capitalism,  so  powerfully  enforced  by 
Auguste  Comte  in  his  Polity  as  the  Social  ideal  of  a 
regenerated  Humanity. 


The  last — alas!  the  posthumous — tale  of  Mrs. 
Humphry  Ward  (Harvest,  Collins  and  Co.)  will  be 
widely  read  by  all  who  love  her  books,  but  also  as  a 
record  of  her  splendid  activity  to  the  last  breath  of 
life  during  these  cruel  days  of  war  and  toil.  I  know 
not  if  it  will  add  to  her  literary  reputation.  For  my- 
self, as  an  old  friend,  I  value  it  for  telling  us  so  much 
of  herself.  No  woman  in  all  these  six  years  of  stress 
and  strain  worked  so  hard,  saw  so  much,  studied  so 


LAST  WORDS  95 

deeply  the  problems  in  France,  Belgium,  and 
America,  appealed  so  vividly  to  the  hearts  of  men  and 
of  women,  in  the  cause  of  a  better  world  for  those 
who  are  to  come.  Years  hence  this  little  book  will 
be  found  a  living  chronicle  to  explain  how  women 
took  to  the  land  and  to  men's  work  and  ways  and 
clothes,  how  the  villages  took  their  part,  and  pen- 
sioners of  both  sexes,  parsons,  and  squires,  Canadians 
and  Americans,  fell  into  rank  in  the  old  country. 
Mrs.  Ward  was  to  the  last  one  of  the  most  strenuous 
opponents  of  Votes  for  Women.  This  book  will 
show  that  she  rejoiced  in  seeing  all  that  women  could 
do — and  only  wished  them  to  hold  fast  to  what  women 
can  do  best. 


Although  the  young  mockers  cease  not  to  call  out 
"  Go  up  "  to  the  bald-headed  Victorian  prophets,  it 
is  curious  how  persistently  the  Georgians  seem  busy 
with  records  of  Victorian  work.  The  poets,  priests, 
writers,  and  politicians  of  the  nineteenth  century 
have  been  studied  in  abundant  biographies  and  criti- 
cisms ;  and  a  brilliant  satirist  has  portrayed  four 
Eminent  Victorians  in  pungent  vignettes,  which  look 
too  much  like  snap-shots  in  a  picture-paper.  Happily 
now  truer  portraits  of  seven  eminent  Victorians  have 
been  given  us  by  a  sympathetic  and  serious  student 
of  modern  thought.  Mrs.  W.  L.  Courtney's  por- 
traits1 have  every  quality  that  Mr.  Lytton  Strachey's 

i  Freethinkers  of  the  Nineteenth  Century,  by  Janet  E.  Courtney, 
O.B.E.    Chapman  and  Hall,  1920. 


96  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

want.  They  are  based  on  careful  study  of  the 
originals :  they  are  singularly  truthful :  and  they 
judge  the  character  and  the  work  of  each  subject  with 
an  impartial  but  kindly  mind.  I  have  been  myself 
in  close  touch  with  Frederick  Denison  Maurice, 
Matthew  Arnold,  Charles  Bradlaugh,  Thomas  Hux- 
ley, and  Leslie  Stephen ;  and  I  have  myself  written 
estimates  of  Miss  Martineau  and  of  Charles  Kingsley. 
And  I  am  amazed  to  find  how  faithfully  a  Georgian 
lady  from  books  has  made  my  friends  live  again. 


The  four  "  Eminent  Victorians  "  were  good  sub- 
jects to  be  analysed — but  they  were  not  typical 
leaders  of  nineteenth-century  thought  and  progress. 
The  seven  leaders  of  thought,  chosen  as  types  of  Vic- 
torian opinion,  differ  widely  both  in  character  and  in 
creed ;  but  they  were  all  stout  asserters  of  liberty  of 
judgment  and  pioneers  of  new  phases  of  belief. 
"Free-thinkers"  does  not  mean  sceptics:  it  means 
those  who  burst  obsolete  bonds  of  tradition.  Two  of 
the  seven  were  earnest  parish  priests  :  Arnold  was  a 
reformer  of  the  Church  :  Huxley,  Stephen,  and  per- 
haps Miss  Martineau,  were  Agnostics :  Bradlaugh 
was  the  only  real  Iconoclast.  The  seven  Victorians 
have  perhaps  hardly  any  common  mark  except 
Honesty,  Courage,  Conviction.  To  my  memory  all 
seven  are  set  forth  in  this  book  in  the  living  form  as 
I  knew  them — and  withal  are  judged  with  a  genial 
independence  of  mind.  Mrs.  Courtney  is  neither 
advocate  nor  satirist ;  she  gives  us  the  facts,  and  does 


LAST  WORDS  97 

not  range  herself  under  anyone.  I  am  myself  per- 
sonally much  interested  in  her  story  of  Maurice's  life 
and  family,  as  of  all  the  seven  I  had  chiefly  moral 
sympathy  with  him,  albeit  the  least  intellectual  agree- 
ment. In  creed  I  am  far  more  with  Huxley  and 
Stephen  :  and  in  sympathy  and  in  belief,  least  of  all 
the  seven  with  Bradlaugh.  If  Maurice  and  Stephen 
could  be  amalgamated  in  one  religious  eirenicon,  it 
would  go  far  to  realise  a  Positivist  ideal. 


Of  the  seven  biographies — suggestive  and  sound  as 
they  all  are — the  central  and  dominant  names  are 
those  of  Huxley  and  of  Stephen  (the  only  one  who 
survived  Queen  Victoria).  These  two  studies  I  would 
specially  recommend  young  readers  to  mark,  if  they 
care  to  understand  what  we  Mid- Victorians  were 
thinking.  They  are  also  the  only  studies  which  Mrs. 
Courtney  seems  to  have  made  from  personal  know- 
ledge. Of  Maurice,  Arnold,  Huxley,  and  Kingsley 
I  have  written  so  much  in  various  books  of  my  own, 
that  I  will  only  now  say  how  entirely  I  am  in  general 
agreement  with  Mrs.  Courtney's  portraits.  Both  her 
Huxley  and  her  Stephen  are  most  faithful  and  in- 
teresting estimates.  Stephen  of  them  all  was  most 
near  to  me  in  age,  in  social  and  intellectual  fellow- 
ship ;  and  I  find  in  these  pages  a  fine  record  of  a  noble 
life.  I  worked  with  him  in  many  a  stiff  road  that  he 
trod  so  stoutly  :  and  I  grieved  to  find  that  he  would 
not  join  me  when  I  trod  paths  of  my  own.  Mrs. 
Courtney  has  told  most  vividly  and  faithfully  her 


98  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

story  of  some  who  in  the  last  century  fought  and  died 
in  the  long  battle  which,  for  more  than  fifty  years, 
was  waged  to  secure  intellectual  freedom  for  our 
children. 


JULY 

-1920- 
VII 

IN  the  early  days  of  climbing  Mont  Blanc  travellers 
were  told  by  the  guides  to  keep  silence  at  a  cer- 
tain mauvais  pas,  for  fear  that  the  vibration  of 
speech  might  loosen  an  avalanche  upon  their  heads. 
Our  country  is  now  passing  through  a  corridor  over- 
hung with  treacherous  blocks.  Its  path  has  never 
been  through  such  a  confused  conglomeration  of 
dangers.  Before  these  pages  are  read,  some  of  these 
masses  may  have  been  left  behind,  or  some  of  them 
may  have  fallen.  Where  any  wrong  utterance  may 
do  mischief,  it  is  best  to  keep  silence  even  from  good 
words.  The  amazing  complications  of  the  various 
crises  that  beset  our  statesmen,  with  all  the  reactions 
of  each  dilemma  on  all  the  rest,  cannot  be  treated  in 
a  few  paragraphs  or  pages ;  and  no  one  of  these 
dilemmas  ought  to  be  handled  apart  from  the  rest. 
As  the  world  rings  with  baseless  rumours,  many  of 
which  are  concocted  by  envy,  malice,  or  fanaticism, 
as  the  true  facts  are  known  to  no  one  outside  the  inner 
councils,  a  mere  observer  of  the  political  imbroglio, 
whatever  he  may  think,  had  better  keep  to  himself 
both  criticism  and  advice.  No  man  has  a  right  to 


99 


100  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

make  either  of  these  public,  unless  he  is  able  to  judge 
the  situation  all  round,  as  a  whole. 


The  long  and  checkered  history  of  our  country  can 
show  no  time  of  manifold  crisis  like  this.  The  whole 
world  seems  seething  at  once.  A  series  of  incalcul- 
able convulsions  has  entirely  recast  all  familiar  values. 
The  war  coming  on  us  (at  least  to  the  public)  like  a 
bolt  from  the  blue — the  Russian  culbute — the  Ameri- 
can descent  upon  Europe — her  still  more  incredible 
desertion — the  entire  reconstruction  of  our  Parlia- 
ment— the  entire  revaluation  of  all  industrial  prob- 
lems, of  all  financial,  commercial,  and  class  problems 
— the  enormous  responsibilities  thrown  on  Britain  by 
the  Treaty  and  covenant  and  our  alliance — the  revo- 
lutions no  longer  latent  in  Ireland,  Egypt,  Syria, 
Mesopotamia,  Turkey,  and  India — all  of  these  to- 
gether make  an  unexampled  chaos  of  problems.  The 
Government  has  to  deal  with  all  of  them  at  once,  and 
each  of  them  in  view  of  all  the  rest.  Parties,  the 
Press,  factions,  classes,  and  groups,  each  call  out 
separately  for  their  own  special  cause.  They  will  not 
see  that  each  problem  depends  on  a  network  of  other 
problems.  Do  this  !  Do  that !  Do  not  do  this  !  is 
shouted  by  ten  thousand  throats.  But  it  is  impos- 
sible to  do  anything — even  to  cease  doing — unless  all 
the  surrounding  conditions  are  taken  into  account 
and  solved.  All  I  say  is,  no  man  has  a  right  to  judge 
the  situation,  unless  he  will  study  all  the  complica- 


LAST  WORDS  101 

tions  of  the  crises,  and  will  weigh  each  proposed  plan 
in  the  light  of  its  relation  to  all  the  rest. 


At  this  most  critical  hour  of  the  Anglo-French 
Entente,  a  very  timely  work  has  been  given  us  in 
English — the  Life  of  the  great  French  Patriot  of 
1870  by  an  eminent  French  statesman — now  Presi- 
dent of  the  Republic.1    Gambetta  was  far  the  greatest 
Frenchman  of  his  time ;  and  his  death  at  the  age  of 
44  was  an  irreparable  loss  to  France  and  to  Europe, 
for  as  an  inspiring  national  force  he  was  at  least  the 
equal  of  Cavour  or  Bismarck,  and  he  had  a  nobler 
nature  than  either  of  these.    The  story  of  his  wonder- 
ful career  (1838-1882)  has  now  been  told  with  singu- 
lar lucidity  and  perfect  truth  by  M.  Deschanel,  one 
of  the  wisest  as  well  as  the  best  informed  of  living 
statesmen  in  France.     This  analysis  of  the  long  duel 
between  France  and  Germany  from  1870  to  1918,  by 
one  who  has  long  been  of  the  inmost  circle  of  French 
diplomacy,    is   invaluable  to  enable  Englishmen   to 
understand  the  internecine  struggle  in  which  France 
has  lived  for  two  generations.    Though  M.  Deschanel 
ends  his  book  at  1882,  it  throws  a  flood  of  light  on  the 
problems  which  the  Great  War  has  sought  to  solve  in 
blood  and  ruin.     Let  Englishmen  study  this  admir- 
able Life,  if  they  wish  to  know  what  are  the  aims  and 
dilemmas  of  Frenchmen.    Gambetta  was  the  type  of 
all  that  is  best  in  France  :  M.  Deschanel  has  proved 
himself  to  be  a  masterly  historian. 

****** 

»  Gambetta,  by  Paul  Deschanel.    W.  Heinemann,  8vo.,  15s. 


,-r™i   r«fti  irnnMlft   I  IQD&RV 


102  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

The  book  has  a  singular  interest  for  me,  and  I  feel 
justified  in  bearing  witness  to  its  scrupulous  imparti- 
ality and  its  truth,  because  during  the  whole  period  I 
followed  with  keen  sympathy  every  phase  of  French 
politics,  was  constantly  in  France,  and  was  in  close 
touch  with  many  French  politicians.  I  knew  Gam- 
betta  personally  and  discussed  the  situation  with  him 
in  his  house  in  the  Rue  Montaigne,  where  he  gathered 
his  colleagues  to  his  breakfast  parties.  I  have  heard 
him  as  President  of  the  Chamber.  I  knew  many  of 
his  colleagues,  especially  Ranc,  Challomel-Lacour, 
Louis  Blanc,  Spuller,  Saint-Hilaire,  Saint-Simon, 
Rouvier,  Felix  Faure,  Jules  Ferry.  During  the 
great  Seize-Mai  struggle  of  1877,  I  was  for  three 
months  in  France,  and  as  the  Times  correspondent,  I 
was  even  acting  in  concert  with  Gambetta's  party. 
When  Gambetta  first  appeared  in  the  Chamber,  I 
was  writing  at  home  on  the  necessity  for  union 
between  France  and  England  as  the  prime  condition 
of  European  peace.  The  day  after  his  death,  i.e.  on 
January  1st,  1883,  I  pronounced  a  eulogy  on  his 
career  at  Newton  Hall.  Few  Englishmen  can  have 
studied  the  whole  story  of  Gambetta's  work  in 
France  more  continuously  than  I  have  done.  And  I 
find  M.  Deschanel's  biography  a  truly  Tacitean 
account  of  his  illustrious  chief. 


The  Life  is  written  with  all  the  literary  charm  and 
the  scrupulous  justesse  of  a  French  Academician.  It 
is  no  panegyric,  no  legend,  no  apology.  It  is  based 


LAST  WORDS  108 

on  a  thorough  study  of  Parliamentary  Papers,  the 
Memoires  of  the  chief  politicians  engaged  abroad  and 
at  home,  and  several  unpublished  letters  of  Gambetta 
himself.  An  unusual  grace  is  given  to  this  biography 
of  a  profound  statesman  by  his  beautiful  love-letters 
to  his  beloved  Leonie,  to  whom  he  wrote  daily  and 
who  exerted  over  him  so  useful  an  influence.  These 
letters,  says  M.  Deschanel,  "form  a  romance  that 
throbs  with  passion."  "You  are  my  moral  and  in- 
tellectual home,"  he  wrote  to  her  in  1876.  This  Life 
of  a  statesman  is  no  encyclopaedia  of  blue-books  and 
despatches  :  it  is  the  romance  of  a  wonderful  career. 
Gambetta  was  not,  like  Cavour  and  Bismarck,  born 
with  title  and  wealth,  but  in  the  modest  home  of  a 
naturalised  Italian  tradesman.  His  education,  his 
club-debatings,  his  penury,  his  life  as  a  student  and 
then  at  the  bar,  are  full  of  Parisian  character.  M. 
Deschanel  gives  a  life-like  portrait  of  the  irrepressible 
passion  of  the  man.  I  too  have  seen  him  bound  up 
from  his  chair,  when  I  asked  him  why  they  did  not 
continue  the  fight  in  1871.  "  Parce  qu'ils  n'avaient 
pas  de  courage,"  he  roared.  As  Paul  Deschanel 
truly  says  :  he  was  possessed  with  "  the  passion  for 
France." 


Gambetta  was  the  soul  of  France  in  the  last 
desperate  defence  of  1871 ;  but  he  was  even  greater 
as  founder  of  the  Republic,  1873-1877.  M. 
Deschanel  very  truly  shows  that  the  construction  of 
a  constitutional  Republic  was  essentially  the  work  of 


104  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

Gambetta.  The  Republic  has  now  endured  through 
tremendous  strains  for  exactly  halt'  a  century,  whilst 
the  Empire  which  Bismarck  founded  has  pulled  itself 
down  in  shameful,  final  ruin.  As  the  President  says, 
Gambetta  brought  to  his  life-long  task  "practical, 
effective  statesmanship."  During  my  long  travels  in 
France,  July  to  November,  1877,  I  visited  the  groups 
of  the  Gambettist  363  deputies  all  over  France,  and 
I  saw  how  the  chief  in  Paris  was  the  centre  of  the 
entire  Liberal  party — the  Foch  of  the  republican 
armies.  He  told  the  Marshal  President  either  "  se 
soumettre  ou  se  demettre  ";  and  he  made  good  the 
summons.  As  Lamartine  said  of  Mirabeau — "his 
ringing  phrases  became  the  proverbs  of  the  Revolu- 
tion." This  was  far  more  true  of  Gambetta's,  for 
his  epigrams  were  both  the  battle-cry  of  revolution 
and  also  the  maxims  of  reconstruction.  Gambetta 
was  greater  than  Mirabeau  or  Danton.  Mirabeau 
knew  that  he  had  "  left  nothing  but  a  vast  upheaval." 
Danton  said — "Let  our  memory  perish!'  Gam- 
betta's memory  will  live  as  the  Washington  of  the 
Republic  of  France. 


Gambetta  was  no  mere  orator  and  party  chief.  He 
was  a  far-sighted  statesman,  who  had  solid  convictions 
of  sound  policy  deep-seated  in  his  brain.  The  Presi- 
dent shows  how  the  practical  politician  was  inspired 
by  the  theories  of  Auguste  Comte — who  "exercised 
a  great  and  ever  increasing  influence  over  him." 
When  fanatical  radicals  attacked  the  very  spirit  of 


LAST  WORDS  105 

government  and  tried  to  suppress  the  army,  Gam- 
betta  crushed  them  with  a  speech  which  embodied 
Comte's  motto — Order  and  Progress.  As  M.  Des- 
chanel  says  :  "  for  the  first  time  the  mind  of  a  poli- 
tician was  guiding  universal  suffrage  towards  an 
organised  democracy."  "His  mind  was  saturated 
with  Mirabeau  and  Comte."  At  the  Sorbonne, 
Gambetta  described  Comte  as  * '  the  most  powerful 
thinker  of  the  age."  As  M.  Deschanel  says — '*  The 
teachings  of  Auguste  Comte  had  at  this  time  a  wide- 
spread influence";  and  at  a  banquet  in  honour  of 
M.  Littre,  Gambetta  declared  himself  practically  a 
believer  in  the  positivist  ideal  of  moral  science  applied 
to  politics.  The  whole  positivist  body  in  France  con- 
tinued to  give  Gambetta  a  hearty  support  in  all  his 
political  activities.  To  them  he  has  always  seemed 
the  true  type  of  the  republican  statesman — who  dis- 
dains to  be  either  demagogue  or  dictator. 


It  must  not  be  supposed  that  this  fine  study  of  the 
President,  full  as  it  is  of  wise  state-craft  and  lucid 
analyses  of  complicated  situations,  fails  to  give  us  a 
picture  of  Gambetta — the  man.  His  origin  and  up- 
bringing are  full  of  interest.  Genoa,  Gascony, 
Cahors,  united  to  breed  in  him  genius,  passion,  and 
resolution.  His  forbears  were  Catholic,  some  of  his 
uncles,  priests.  His  looks,  which  some  jesters  called 
Jewish,  were  intensely  Italian ;  his  wit,  humour  and 
charm  were  intensely  French.  There  were  in  him 
strains  of  Rebelais,  Mirabeau,  Voltaire  and  Diderot. 


106  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

The  fou  furieiu:  that  Thiers  once  called  him,  had  in- 
exhaustible powers  of  work,  of  patience,  of  sagacious 
self-restraint.  He  not  only  saw  the  immediate  need 
of  the  hour,  but  he  foresaw  how  the  present  would 
work  out.  A  fine  saying  of  his  is  this  :  "  Parties  are 
formed  by  ideas  :  groups  are  formed  by  interests." 
It  is  rare  that  the  story  of  one  who  rode  on  the  top- 
most waves  of  a  great  revolution  can  show  so  much 
of  family  affection,  of  love  for  a  noble  woman,  of 
magnanimity  to  opponents.  His  rejoinder  to  Thiers 
when  he  cried  out :  "  There  sits  the  man  who  has 
freed  our  provinces  from  the  occupation,"  was  the 
act  of  a  generous  soul  and  true  patriot  who  can  for- 
get "party"  and  can  smile  at  insults.  Gambetta, 
indeed,  was  a  truly  great  Frenchman ;  and  in  this 
Life  the  President  has  written  a  book  that  is  worthy 
of  such  a  subject. 


In  philosophy  the  problem  of  the  hour  is  the  Law 
of  Progress.  It  is  inevitable  that,  after  a  cataclysmic 
epoch  of  Change,  thoughtful  minds  should  ask  :  Is 
this  Progress — is  it  morally  and  socially  all  to  the 
good — is  it  destined  to  continue?  Professor  J.  B. 
Bury,  of  Cambridge,  published  a  very  learned  history 
of  The  Idea  of  Progress,  on  wrhich  I  commented  at 
the  time.  Mr.  Marvin,  of  Oxford,  and  his  friends 
have  published,  at  the  Clarendon  Press,  a  series  of 
essays  on  Progress  from  1870  to  1914.  And  now  the 
Dean  of  St.  Paul's  has  issued  from  the  same  Press 
his  Romanes  Lecture,  entitled,  as  is  Professor  Bury's 


LAST  WORDS  107 

book,  The  Idea  of  Progress.  Here  we  have  three 
views  of  Progress.  Professor  Bury  gives  us,  with 
scholarly  judgment,  the  history  of  the  Idea ;  the 
Oxford  essayists  see  mostly  the  blessed  signs  of  the 
change.  The  Dean  is  critical,  trenchant,  almost 
negative.  Nothing  so  brilliant,  so  full  of  wit,  of 
irony,  of  home  thrusts  at  credulity  and  ignorance 
has  appeared.  We  might  think  he  had  inherited  the 
flashing  rapier  of  a  much  older  Dean,  were  it  not  that 
his  long  studies  of  the  Platonists  had  endowed  him 
with  the  Socratic  vein  of  pungent  probing  to  the  root 
of  all  forms  of  conventional  and  emotional  sophistry. 
The  literary  honours  of  this  tri-partite  discussion  rest 
with  Dr.  Inge,  who  has  certainly  won  the  first  round 
"on  points." 


The  key  of  the  Dean's  argument  is  disproof  of  the 
belief  in  a  Law  of  Progress,  automatic,  inevitable, 
continuous,  moral,  and  beneficent — stated  in  its  most 
violent  form  by  Spencer,  and  still  the  moving  spirit 
of  democratic  rhetoric  everywhere.  As  he  shows,  it 
is  to  misuse  Darwin's  science,  if  we  assume  that  such 
a  law  of  human  perfectibility  is  a  necessary  result  of 
evolution.  Dr.  Inge  shows  how  little  modern 
astronomy  encourages  the  glorification  of  our  planet 
and  the  infinite  welfare  of  its  inhabitants.  Nor  does 
scientific  history  disclose  any  continuous  improve- 
ment in  man's  nature  and  happiness.  But  the  dogma 
of  necessary  progress  in  things  political  is  the  mis- 
chievous lure  that  persuades  the  people  that  what 


108  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

seems  "  to  be  coming  "  is  necessarily  good,  and  that 
the  law  of  change  is  destined  to  sweep  away  such 
antique  superstitions  as  Country,  Property,  Order, 
and  Government.  And  the  law  of  Progress  in 
religion  "has  distorted  Christianity."  The  Dean 
sweeps  aside  Spencer's  preposterous  dogmatism  of 
differentiation  in  the  Universe,  as  well  as  Hegel's 
dream  of  an  unalterable  and  infinite  Absolute — both 
of  which  are  anathema  to  the  philosophy  of  experi- 
ence. With  a  great  deal  of  this  the  school  of  thought 
with  which  I  hold  is  in  perfect  agreement.  We  are 
meliorists,  not  optimists.  We  trust  that  Man  can 
better  himself  and  his  earth,  but  has  no  automatic 
perfectibility  to  look  to.  We  agree  with  Huxley  that 
cosmic  nature  is  far  from  Man's  friend ;  but  it  is  ex- 
travagant to  call  it  Man's  enemy.  We  do  not  see  any 
certainty  that  man  must  be  perfect.  But  we  hope  to 
do  the  best  under  difficult  conditions  to  improve  our 
lot — and  also  ourselves. 


It  is  not  the  business  of  an  ecclesiastic  to  see  truths 
in  Comte,  but  it  is  the  part  of  a  philosopher  to  under- 
stand him.  In  assuming  that  Comte's  philosophy 
accepts  any  absolute  or  necessary  Law  of  Progress, 
Dr.  Inge  goes  too  far.  Progress,  indeed,  is  a  primary 
and  sacred  motto  of  Positivist  religion ;  but  it  is 
"  Progress  the  End  " — that  is,  the  object  of  human 
endeavour — and,  as  it  is  to  be  inspired  by  Love,  it  is 
moral  progress ;  and,  being  based  on  Truth,  it  is  ever 
subject  to  external  limits.  Astronomy,  Physics, 


LAST  WORDS  109 

Physiology,  Biology  show  us  how  vast,  how  menac- 
ing, are  these  limits.  They  are  outrageously  over- 
stated in  the  scientific  Agnosticism  of  Professor 
Huxley  and  in  the  cynical  atheism  of  Bertrand 
Russell.  Our  environment  on  earth  has  infinite 
dangers  and  obstacles,  and  also  infinite  opportunities 
for  good  and  for  happiness.  If  it  will  only  last  for 
some  millions  of  a?ons,  that  is  quite  enough  for  us. 
But  when  the  Dean  finds  support  in  Huxley's  and 
Russell's  nightmare  of  a  demonic  world  about  to 
swallow  up  mankind,  how  does  he  reconcile  such  com- 
promising terrors  with  the  Omnipotence  and  Benevo- 
lence of  a  Creator  ?  Positivists  are  not  troubled  either 
with  the  potential  horrors  of  scientists  nor  with  the 
logical  dilemmas  of  Creation.  They  live  in  a  world 
which  courage  and  thought  can  make  a  tolerable 
home — at  any  rate  for  countless  generations  to  come. 
That  is  enough  :  and  they  are  not  at  all  busy  with 
metaphysical  revelations  about  the  Universe,  nor  with 
the  baffling  inconsistencies  which  obtrude  on  the 
prayers  of  theologians.  It  is  a  misunderstanding  to 
assume  that  Comte  either  stated — or  attempted  to 
state — any  "  Law  of  Progress  "  as  a  necessary  conse- 
quence of  evolution.  He  stated  the  moral  la\v,  that 
is,  the  duty  of  humanity  to  improve  itself  and  its  own 
world,  and  that,  as  a  fact,  that  duty  had  been  fairly 
observed.  Surely,  this  is  on  the  lines  of  all  rational 
Theology. 


110  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

The  Romanes  Lecture  is  a  veritable  mine  of  home- 
truths,  and  it  scintillates  with  brilliant  epigrams.  But 
home-truths  have  their  brighter  side  in  practice,  and 
epigrams  too  often  over-state  them  till  they  become 
paradoxes.  A  Bishop  once  told  an  eminent  Dar- 
winian that  he  saw  the  ape  in  him ;  but  do 
"  we  "  to-day — does  anybody — now  believe  we  are 
"descendants  of  monkeys"?  The  rational  view  of 
history  admits  that  civilisation  ebbs  and  flows  in  suc- 
cessive stages  of  decline  and  growth  ;  but  the  doctrine 
of  recurrent  cycles  is  rejected  by  competent  students 
as  plainly  contrary  to  facts.  The  Dean  regards  seven 
centuries — I  presume  from  A.D.  300  to  A.D.  1000 — 
as  the  Dark  Ages  and  worthless.  He  consigns  to 
Nirvana  the  Latin  Fathers  and  the  Catholic  Church, 
Tribonian  and  Roman  law,  Byzantine  polity,  litera- 
ture, and  art,  Charlemagne,  Alfred,  Theodoric,  and 
Otto.  Does  history  show  that  "  civilisation  is  a 
disease  almost  invariably  fatal,  unless  its  course  is 
checked  in  time ' '  ?  How  would  the  Dean  check 
civilisation?  Have  we  "devastated  the  loveliness  of 
the  world"?  Have  we  "enslaved  the  animal 
creation  "?  Do  dogs,  cats,  horses,  sheep,  cattle,  and 
elephants  consider  us  to  be  human  devils?  Russians 
and  Germans  have  done  horrid  brutalities,  but  has 
not  the  civilised  world  risen  up  in  abhorrence?  Has 
not  the  conscience  of  men — and  still  more  of  women 
— impelled  them  to  deeds  of  humanity  in  vast  popu- 
lations such  as  were  unparalleled  in  former  Ages? 
Comte  certainly  held  that  "  the  Catholic  monotheism 
of  the  Middle  Ages  was  ah  advance  upon  pagan 


LAST  WORDS  111 

antiquity."    It  is  strange  indeed  to  find  an  Anglican 
ecclesiastic  ridiculing  that  as  superstition. 


I  remember  a  former  Dean  of  St.  Paul's  who 
wrote  a  great  book  in  praise  of  Latin  Christianity. 
I  am  proud  to  think  that  Comte's  whole  conception 
of  history  is  governed  with  the  same  idea  of  imperish- 
able advance,  both  moral  and  intellectual,  which  we 
owe  to  the  Middle  Ages,  and  even  to  the  Dark  Ages. 
To  write  that  Comte  aimed  at  a  Theocracy,  or  the 
subjection  of  State  to  Church,  or  to  repression  of  free 
thought — this  is  misrepresentation ;  for  the  very 
centre  of  his  system  is  complete  independence  of 
State  and  Church,  of  material  and  of  spiritual  power, 
and  of  unlimited  freedom  of  opinion. 

****** 

In  the  end,  however,  the  Dean,  who  is  very  scep- 
tical about  any  regular  Progress,  gives  us  an  ample 
field  for  Hope.  Curiously  enough,  this  is  precisely 
the  Positivist  attitude  to  the  future — at  any  rate  on 
earth.  We,  too,  have  no  absolute  certainty  of  any 
necessary  Progress.  We  acknowledge  our  human 
limitations  and  dangers.  We  hope  to  overcome  them 
by  faith,  by  science,  by  moral  energy.  So  far  we  go 
with  the  Christian  triad  of  Faith,  Hope,  Love.  The 
evolution  of  Humanity  seems  to  us  on  the  whole  to 
be  morally  progressive  with  cruel  failures  and  sets- 
back.  History  of  Man  has  a  real,  but  somewhat 
chequered,  continuity ;  and  we  will  not  allow  our- 
selves to  be  downhearted  by  the  noble  indignation  of 


112  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

one  who  sometimes  uses  satire  to  give  point  to  his 
moral  warnings. 


Those  whom  the  Dean's  dilemmas  have  made 
downhearted  may  take  comfort  from  studying 
another  volume  issued  by  the  Clarendon  Press — 
Recent  Developments  in  European  Thought,  essays 
edited  by  F.  S.  Marvin,  Oxford,  8vo.,  1920.  Mr. 
Marvin,  the  author  of  The  Living  Past,  The  Century 
of  Hope,  and  other  works,  has  now  edited  a  volume 
of  twelve  essays  by  graduates  of  Oxford,  Cambridge, 
Manchester,  St.  Andrews,  and  Durham,  to  illustrate 
the  "Progress  of  Western  Civilisation"  in  the  last 
generation,  starting  with  the  Franco-German  War  of 
1870.  The  editor  opens  with  the  view  that  a  great 
stage  in  the  growth  of  unity  among  nations  is  marked 
by  two  international  tragedies ;  but  he  does  not  agree 
with  the  Dean  that  the  war  of  1914  exhibited  on  the 
whole  a  cyclical  reversion  to  mediaeval  barbarism. 
He  admits  that  there  is  with  some  ' '  a  falling  in  the 
barometer  of  temperament,"  but  he  finds  that  the 
tragedies  of  the  period  are  rather  on  the  surface  than 
in  the  nature  of  humanity,  and  that  "  such  an  output 
of  mental  energy,  rewarded  by  such  a  harvest  of 
truth,  is  without  precedent  in  man's  evolution."  He 
points  to  "  the  advance  in  international  unity  and 
social  reform  within  the  State,"  both  of  which  were 
heralded  by  Comte  before  1857.  He  finds  "good 
grounds  for  thinking  that  the  average  man  has  im- 
proved in  goodness  "  ;  and  still  more  that  "  the  collec- 


LAST  WORDS  113 

live  soul  of  man  has  grown."  The  man  of  science  is 
certain  that  foresight  will  "  make  the  reign  of  man 
upon  the  planet  wider  and  firmer  than  before.  The 
spirit  of  science  is  the  spirit  of  hope." 


The  same  tempered  optimism  animates  the  other 
essays,  which  are  occupied  in  tracing  recent  develop- 
ments in  philosophy,  religion,  history,  economics,  and 
biology.  Their  main  business  is  to  show  develop- 
ment, which  they  do  not  claim  to  be  at  all  automatic, 
necessary,  or  continuous,  but  which  on  the  whole, 
and  with  frequent  failures  and  reactions,  they  take  to 
be  conducive  to  human  welfare.  The  essays  on  Phil- 
osophy and  on  Religion  are  much  occupied  with 
criticism  of  recent  specialist  theories,  but  neither 
essays  are  revolutionary  nor  pessimist.  The  learned 
and  masterly  study  of  Historical  Research  by  Mr. 
G.  P.  Gooch  is  an  invaluable  summary  of  all  that  has 
been  done  in  our  times  to  show  how  *'  the  scope  of 
history  has  gradually  widened  till  it  has  come  to  in- 
clude every  aspect  of  the  life  of  humanity" — "an 
immense  and  almost  an  immeasurable  advance  in  his- 
toric studies."  This  splendid  survey  of  recent  history 
amply  justifies  the  editor's  words  (in  p.  10) :  "  No 
single  generation  before  ever  learnt  so  much,  not  only 
of  the  world  around  it,  but  also  of  the  doings  of  pre- 
vious generations."  Alas!  the  Romanes  Lecture 
would  only  lead  us  to  think  that  we  are  progeniem 
vitiosiorem . 


114  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

The  essays  on  Atomic  Theories,  Biology,  Art, 
Music,  are  specialist  studies  on  recent  achievements. 
The  sixth  essay,  on  Political  Theory,  by  Mr.  Lindsay, 
summarises  new  views  about  the  functions  of  the 
State  and  the  altered  position  of  Parliament.  It 
appears  to  be  rather  a  statement  of  new  books  than  a 
practical  judgment  on  actual  conditions.  The 
coupling  of  Parliament  and  Trades  Unions  as  equally 
legitimate  sources  of  political  power  ignores  the  essen- 
tial difference  that  Parliaments  are  chosen  by  electors 
of  all  degrees  of  interest,  capacity  and  education — 
and  now  by  women  as  well  as  men ;  whilst  Trades 
Unions  are  associations  of  manual  labourers  neces- 
sarily with  none  but  elementary  education,  and 
united  by  only  one  interest — that  of  gaining  higher 
wages  and  making  their  labour  easier.  To  gain  these 
ends,  they  are  usually  indifferent  to  the  welfare  of 
other  citizens  and  to  that  of  Country,  which  many  of 
them  regard  as  a  discredited  Idol.  All  this  would 
come  under  the  head  of  the  Anarchy  which  the 
Romanes  Lecturer  foresees,  but  yet  it  seems  to  fall 
in  with  the  general  optimism  of  this  Oxford  volume. 
The  Economic  Development  is  treated  from  three 
points  of  view — "The  Industrial  Scene,  1842," 
*'  Mining  Operations,"  and  "  The  Spirit  of  Associa- 
tion," all  by  Mr.  C.  R.  Fay,  of  Cambridge.  The 
three  papers  give  a  fair  statement,  from  well-known 
text-books  and  Parliamentary  inquiries,  of  the  deplor- 
able evils  of  the  industrial  civilisation  which  the 
Romanes  Lecture  denounces.  But  it  goes  on  to  show 
what  great  and  continuous  improvements  have  been 


LAST  WORDS  115 

accomplished  in  eighty  years  by  the  untiring  efforts 
of  men  in  association,  led  by  public-spirited  men  and 
women  drawn  from  all  classes  and  ranks.  I  am  old 
enough  to  remember  1842  myself,  both  in  town  and 
in  country;  and,  whatever  Blue-books  tell  us  of 
horrors  and  starvation,  working  people  on  the  whole 
were  quite  as  cheerful  as  they  are  to-day ;  they  had 
many  enjoyments  which  are  now  lost,  and  there  was 
nothing  like  the  amount  of  social  discontent.  Was 
Pickwick's  England  as  terrible  as  Trotsky's  Petro- 
grad? 


So  the  book  closes  with  a  perfect  paean  by  Miss 
Melian  Stawell  to  the  ultimate  enlargement  of 
Humanity  by  the  united  efforts  of  Man.  Its  theme, 
like  that  of  the  Dean,  is  Hope — progress  by  human 
effort.  Its  motto  is  from  Shelley — 

To  hope  till  Hope  creates 
From  its  own  wreck  the  thing  it  contemplates — 

It  is  indeed  an  idea  which,  at  any  rate  in  the  Universi- 
ties and  in  our  science  schools,  the  warnings  of  suc- 
cessive Romanes  Lectures  have  not  yet  eliminated. 


In  these  times  of  Industrial  Unrest  no  more  valu- 
able summary  of  sound  thought  has  appeared  than  is 
Mr.  Harold  Cox's  book,  Economic  Liberty  (Long- 
mans, 1920).  He  begins  with  a  historical  sketch  of 
the  freedom  of  labour,  until  it  has  developed  into  the 


116  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

extreme  licence  of  refusing  to  carry  the  King's  troops 
and  their  equipment.  He  goes  on  to  prove  that 
Socialism  of  this  kind  "is  of  necessity  the  negation 
of  liberty."  The  Ethics  of  Property,  the  Ethics  of 
Socialism,  Class  Warfare,  all  rest  upon  the  logical 
postulate  that  to  destroy  the  institutions  of  Society, 
liberty  of  action  must  be  suppressed  and  force  must 
be  used  to  assert  the  rule  of  the  social  theorists. 
Bolshevism,  with  its  horrors,  is  a  local  and  special 
form  of  tyranny;  but  all  communistic  and  guild 
Socialism  involves  the  same  despotism — the  same 
monopoly — the  crushing  out  of  all  who  resist  the 
dominant  factions  is  a  necessity  for  Socialism ;  and 
Mr.  Cox  shows  that  this  dogma  is  blandly  asserted  not 
only  by  Lenin,  but  by  the  leaders  of  International 
Socialism,  by  prominent  officials  of  our  great  Trades 
Unions,  as  well  as  by  the  "intellectuals"  who  ex- 
pound the  Gospel  of  the  New  Life.  Be  my  brother, 
or  I  will  kill  thee  !  says  Lenin.  The  motto  of  Belgium 
is  "  L 'Union  fait  la  Force."  The  motto  of  our  inter- 
nationalists is  "  La  Force  fait  PUnion  " — Those  who 
do  not  accept  the  Union  creed  must  be  made  to  feel 
its  irresistible  arm. 


Especially  valuable  just  now  is  Mr.  Cox's  admir- 
able chapter  on  Nationalisation.  He  traces  the 
growth  of  this  cry  to  the  crises  of  war,  the  monopoly 
possessed  by  the  coal-miners,  and  the  dependence  of 
Legislature  and  the  Government  on  an  enormous  in- 
crease of  Labour  votes.  The  necessities  of  carrying 


LAST  WORDS  117 

on  the  life  of  the  public,  ignorance  of  economic  facts, 
and  the  eagerness  of  workers  to  take  advantage  of 
crises  to  gain  more  money — all  these  combine  to  make 
Nationalisation  the  lure  to  a  millennium,  in  spite  of 
all  the  proofs  of  its  conspicuous  failure. 


AUGUST 

-    1920    - 


VIII 


THE  Conventions  at  Chicago  and  at  San  Fran- 
cisco have  now  (July,  1920)  made  it  plain  that 
no  American  help  in  the  pacification  and 
restoration  of  Europe  can  be  expected  before  March, 
1921,  and,  indeed,  little,  if  any,  and  that  very  doubt- 
ful, during  that  year  at  all.  It  is  a  momentous  and 
disastrous  result  of  the  world's  high  hopes;  for  the 
chaos  and  strife  in  which  Europe  exists  to-day  are 
mainly  caused  by  its  accepting  the  extravagant 
Utopias  of  Woodrow  Wilson.  We  stand  practically 
alone — faced  with  an  accumulation  of  menacing 
tasks  : — sore-stricken  and  almost  desperate  allies,  in- 
tolerable mandates  thrust  on  us,  jealous  and  bitter 
colleagues,  impracticable  promises  to  weak  States, 
veiled  or  open  rebellion,  bankruptcy,  even  revolution, 
seriously  discussed  by  statesmen.  Look  round  the 
world.  France  in  very  reasonable  anxiety,  Italy  in 
very  bitter  complaint,  our  enemies  restless,  defiant, 
and  almost  chaotic,  Russia  entirely  chaotic,  China 
nearly  as  bad,  Japan  in  a  dilemma,  Poland  in  great 
peril,  the  Balkan  people  on  the  edge  of  war,  Armenia 
deserted,  Syria,  Mesopotamia,  Palestine  in  ferment 

118 


LAST  WORDS  119 

with  monstrous  liabilities,  Egypt,  India,  Ireland,  in 
revolt  more  or  less  violent. 


It  is  a  sea  of  dangers  to  make  the  boldest  feel  grave. 
The  mighty  people  of  America,  to  whom  not  one- 
tenth  of  our  difficulties  were  even  tendered,  have  now 
formally  refused  to  touch  any  outside  tasks,  and  have 
resolved  to  give  all  their  efforts  to  their  own  troubles 
at  home.  There  are  times  when  I  could  wish  that  we 
did  so,  too.  I  feel  often  that  within  our  Empire, 
within  the  United  Kingdom,  are  tremendous  prob- 
lems to  solve,  some  almost  beyond  our  strength,  even 
if  we  let  the  world  outside  go  to  ruin  in  its  own  way, 
as  American  patriots  say  is  the  right  thing  to  do.  It 
may  be — but  Englishmen  never  shrink  from  tasks  and 
duties  to  which  they  have  once  put  their  hand  and 
given  their  best  blood.  The  conditions  of  the  world, 
more  than  our  own  desires  or  plans,  have  involved  us 
in  these  accumulated  liabilities.  We  have  not  the 
geographical  aloofness  of  Americans,  and  we  are  not 
prone  to  run  back  into  a  moral  aloofness,  either. 
Noblesse  oblige.  The  historic  traditions  of  an  ancient 
nation  force  it  to  hold  fast,  even  in  extreme  risks. 
We  smile  at  gambols  to  twist  the  tail  of  the  sham 
heraldic  lion ;  it  is  not  safe  to  pull  the  tail  of  the  bull- 
dog. No  !  I  am  sorely  tempted  to  say  :  we  have  done 
enough  for  alien  nations — let  us  turn  to  do  for  our- 
selves. But  I  know  that  England  must  play  her 
great  part  out. 


120  NOVISSIMA  VERB  A 

Much  as  I  feel  the  impossibility  of  retiring  from 
our  duties,  I  repudiate  the  intolerable  burden  which 
many  of  them  present  in  their  official  form.  It  is 
hopeless  to  do  anything  at  all  with  regard  to  Russia. 
We  can  do  nothing  in  arms  or  by  embargo  or  official 
intercourse.  Nothing  can  be  done  to  Russia : 
nothing  can  be  got  from  Russia.  Let  who  will  do 
business  with  Russians  and  get  anything  they  can. 
Our  Government  had  better  leave  Russia  alone.  So, 
too,  let  the  Baltic  peoples  settle  their  own  affairs.  I 
fear  we  can  do  little  to  save  Poland  from  the  fate 
which  it  has  so  rashly  drawn  on  itself.  Fiume,  Con- 
stantinople, Smyrna,  Anatolia,  even  Armenia  and 
Cilicia  are  imbroglios  in  which  we  may  seek  to  be 
useful — but  which  we  cannot  settle  by  ourselves,  and 
in  which  we  ought  not  to  exhaust  our  own  strength. 
Italy  and  Yugo-Slavia  must  settle  their  claims  by 
themselves.  We  have  no  right  to  back  up  the  Greek 
adventure  in  Anatolia,  nor  have  we  anything  to  do 
with  the  Turks  in  Cilicia.  As  to  Constantinople,  the 
Dardanelles,  and  free  sea-way  into  the  Black  Sea,  we 
already  have  secured  it,  and  can  make  it  permanent. 
It  is  extravagant  for  Britain  to  attempt  to  settle  the 
whole  world  in  a  state  of  internecine  turmoil. 


Our  Asiatic  responsibilities,  our  "mandates" 
there,  our  African  liabilities,  are  an  even  more 
tremendous  charge.  That  "blessed  word" — that 
fatal  name — Mesopotamia,  seems  to  open  on  us  an 
interminable  mirage  of  desert  and  wild  nomads.  The 


LAST  WORDS  121 

prospect  of  civilising  a  vast  tract  of  raw  wilderness, 
over  which  restless  Musulmans  rove,  is  a  dangerous 
delusion,  which  would  be  intolerable  in  the  height  of 
our  former  prosperity.  If  it  be  impossible  at  once  to 
withdraw  altogether,  let  us  prepare  to  place  it  as  soon 
as  possible  under  the  independent  rule  of  some  native 
chief,  such  as  the  Emir  Abdulla.  As  to  Palestine, 
which  in  a  fit  of  perverse  sentiment  our  statesmen 
promised  to  the  Jews  in  the  vein  of  rhetorical  folly, 
in  which  Disraeli  seized  Cyprus,  "as  a  means  of 
civilising  Asia  Minor,"  the  sooner  we  get  out  of  this 
escapade  the  better.  Why  a  Christian  Power  should 
surrender  the  scene  of  the  Gospel  to  those  who  cried 
out  "  Crucify  Him  !  "  no  one  can  say.  If  the  French 
choose  to  conquer  and  hold  all  Syria,  it  is  their  adven- 
ture, and  we  should  not  assist.  At  any  rate,  let  us 
get  rid  of  mandates  and  spheres  of  influence  as  soon  as 
possible.  They  are  intolerable  burdens  and  incal- 
culable risks.  It  is  monstrous  that,  in  a  time  when 
bankruptcy,  riot,  and  revolution  yawn  for  us  at 
home,  we  should  be  flinging  countless  millions  and 
our  best  blood  into  these  bottomless  pits  of  Sheitan. 


It  is  surely  time  that  Ministers  returned  from  in- 
terminable conferences  abroad  to  look  after  the 
imminent  perils  that  gather  round  us  at  home. 
Debates  in  Parliament,  especially  those  in  the  House 
of  Lords,  where  statesmen  can  speak  freely  what  they 
think  and  what  they  know,  and  the  warnings  of  men 
of  great  financial  experience  must  convince  the  most 


122  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

thoughtless  that  the  economic  state  of  our  country — 
indeed,  of  all  Europe — has  never  been  so  near  the 
brink  of  ruin.  That  is  our  first  care,  for  it  has  behind 
it  infinite  dilemmas  and  perils.  Then,  the  very  con- 
stitution of  the  United  Kingdom  is  in  urgent  need  of 
repair.  There  are  two  problems  concerning  it  which 
must  be  undertaken.  One  is  a  systematic  scheme  of 
Devolution  based  on  the  report  of  the  Speaker.  The 
other  is  the  reform  or  recasting  of  the  House  of 
Lords.  For  my  part,  as  to  Devolution,  I  rather  in- 
cline to  the  views  of  Mr.  Murray  Macdonald.  For 
the  Lords  the  report  of  Lord  Bryce  prepares  the 
ground.  In  any  case,  what  is  needed  is  a  real, 
efficient,  independent  Second  Chamber  to  embody 
the  counsels  of  the  Elder  Statesmen.  Nothing  can 
be  worse  than  the  democratic  nostrum  of  a  Single 
Chamber  autocracy.  The  worst  of  all  autocracies  is 
an  ochlocracy.  As  Lord  Grey  has  said :  Single 
Chamber  rule  would  be  "  the  very  devil." 


To  everyone  who  has  to  do  with  our  economic 
problems,  be  he  workman,  employer,  or  politician,  a 
really  indispensable  book  is  the  new  revised  edition  of 
The  History  of  Trade  Unionism,  by  Sidney  and 
Beatrice  Webb  (Longmans  and  Co.,  1920).  The 
original  edition  of  1894  was  an  exhaustive  and 
authoritative  account  of  this  great  element  of  modern 
industrial  life  ;  and  the  indefatigable  authors  have  now 
extended  their  work  to  the  present  year,  adding  about 
250  pages,  or  something  like  a  third  of  the  whole. 


LAST  WORDS  128 

They  say  with  truth  that  the  thirty  years  which  have 
elapsed  since  1890  have  been  momentous  in  the  his- 
tory of  Trade  Unionism ;  have  enormously  increased 
its  numbers,  wealth,  and  power;  have  recast  its  legal 
and  internal  organisation — that  Labour  are  already 
the  "  Opposition,"  and  make  a  bid  to  be  the 
"Government."  This  is  indeed  to  write  what  is 
practically  a  new  book — and  it  is  one  which  every 
public  man,  whether  his  part  lies  in  the  theory  or  the 
practice  of  economics,  will  do  well  to  master.  As  one 
who  has  been  in  close  association  with  this  movement 
now  for  at  least  sixty  years,  and  who  in  its  latest 
development  differs  widely  from  the  theories  of  these 
authors,  I  make  bold  to  say  that  the  new  volume  is  a 
permanent  contribution  to  the  history  of  our  times. 


During  the  last  thirty  years — which  the  new  part 
of  the  work  covers — the  membership  of  the  societies 
increased  from  about  one  and  a  half  millions  to  more 
than  six  millions — from  about  20  per  cent,  of  the 
adult  male  manual  workers  to  60  per  cent.,  or  12  per 
cent,  of  the  census  population ;  and  this  increase  has 
been  nearly  continuous  during  that  period,  common 
to  various  grades  of  workers  and  in  both  sexes.  And 
this  has  been  accompanied  by  a  series  of  Acts  of  the 
Legislature  and  new  organisation  within,  such  as 
various  Amalgamations  and  Federations,  the  Shop 
Stewards'  movement,  and  the  Guild  System  and  the 
claim  to  "  Direct  Action."  The  outstanding  feature 
of  the  Trade  Union  world  has  been  the  enormous 


124  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

advance  in  organisation  and  influence  of  the  miners, 
the  railway  men,  and  the  transport  workers.  The 
history  of  all  these  is  elaborately  worked  out  with 
figures  and  incidents,  including  the  famous  Sankey 
commission,  and  the  railway  strike  of  September, 
1919.  Needless  to  say,  that  both  of  these  are  de- 
scribed from  the  workmen's  point  of  view,  Mr. 
Sidney  Webb  being  their  representative  on  the  Com- 
mission ;  and  the  story  would  be  very  differently  told 
by  those  who  defend  the  interests  of  the  public  and 
the  institution  of  Property  which  it  is  sought  to 
"  socialise." 


But  on  the  whole  there  is  only  a  minimum  of  par- 
tisan colour  in  this  book  as  a  real  history  of  Trade 
Unionism.  It  is  rather  an  encyclopaedia  of  industrial 
facts ;  and  not  a  single  element  in  this  immense  field 
is  omitted,  nor  is  the  historian  sunk  in  the  advocate. 
The  long,  tangled,  and  confused  series  of  Acts  of 
Parliament  from  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
century  is  accurately  stated,  the  various  Commissions 
of  Inquiry  beginning  with  1867  and  the  consequent 
settlement  of  1875,  the  entrance  of  Socialism  about 
1880-82,  the  growth  of  the  Congress,  the  dock  strikes, 
the  eight  hours'  day  movement,  the  miners'  strike  of 
1911,  the  Osborne  judgment,  the  effects  of  the  great 
war,  the  demand  for  socialisation,  syndicalism,  share 
in  management,  "direct  action,"  co-operative  alli- 
ance, the  Labour  Party  in  Parliament,  Soviets  and 
the  Independent  Labour  Party,  profit-sharing  and 


.  LAST  WORDS  125 

the  Whitley  Councils — all  of  these  are  treated  with 
accuracy  and  with  necessary  detail.  The  book,  in 
fact,  is  the  material  by  which  this  vast  and  growing 
industrial  power  may  be  studied,  rather  than  a  body 
of  opinions  by  which  it  is  to  be  judged. 


And  now,  as  I  look  back  over  the  sixty  years  of  my 
own  experience  of  Trade  Unionism,  I  am  filled  with 
a  mixture  of  feelings  of  confidence  and  of  anxiety, 
nor  can  I  altogether  share  the  exultations  of  my 
friends  the  authors.  In  the  present  century  the 
fundamental  character  of  Unionism  has  changed. 
What  was  once  a  movement  to  equalise  the  resources 
of  Labour  in  dealing  with  Capital  has  degenerated 
into  a  vast  social  war  to  eliminate  Capital.  When  I 
sat  on  the  first  Royal  Commission  of  1867-9  Unionism 
was  a  constitutional  movement  to  bring  employers  to 
satisfy  the  claims  of  the  wage-earners.  For  forty 
years  it  did  this  with  signal  success,  and  all  men  of 
good  will  rejoice  in  the  blessed  improvement  in  the 
moral  and  material  conditions  of  the  workers  it  has 
achieved.  They  are  vast,  general,  and  permanent. 
But  to-day  Unionism,  at  least  in  its  official  and  vocal 
form,  is  Socialist — it  stands  for  a  catastrophic  social 
revolution,  aiming  at  the  removal  of  Employers  as  an 
order,  the  elimination  of  Wages  as  an  institution,  at 
the  workers  being  (under  universal  democracy)  their 
own  employers,  in  a  word  in  being  masters  not  only 
of  Industry,  but  of  Society.  Our  authors  recognise 
this  momentous  change  in  their  first  sentence.  In 


126  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

1894  they  described  a  Trade  Union  as  a  continuous 
association  of  wage-earners  to  improve  the  conditions 
"  of  their  employment."  In  1920  they  alter  this  to 
the  conditions  "of  their  working  lives."  They  ex- 
plain that  Unionism  no  longer  recognises  a  capitalist 
or  wage-system  at  all. 


Now  a  catastrophic  social  revolution  such  as  this  is 
not  to  be  faced  with  a  light  heart  and  paeans  over  the 
"  record  "'  majorities  of  the  card- vote.  Will  the 
secular  strength  of  British  Capitalism  and  Con- 
servatism submit  without  resistance?  Will  the  good 
sense  of  the  forty  millions  who  are  not  Unionists 
accept  the  lead  of  the  six  millions  who  are  ?  Are  the 
six  millions  all  convinced  followers  of  the  eloquent 
leaders  and  of  the  dexterous  managers  at  Congress 
and  Conventions?  Do  the  Labour  chiefs  feel  sure 
that  they  can  organise  a  tremendous  industrial  revo- 
lution without  its  ending  in  the  ghastly  ruin  of  Petro- 
grad  and  Moscow?  For  my  part  I  feel  doubts.  I 
spoke  of  "  the  official  and  vocal  part  "  of  Unionism, 
for  I  believe  this  new  claim  of  Socialism  to  be  the 
work  of  a  quite  moderate  minority.  I  doubt  if  one- 
tenth  of  these  six  millions  are  convinced  Socialists — 
or  if  one-twentieth  are  convinced  Communists — and, 
after  all,  Socialism  is  only  a  colourable,  half-way,  un- 
workable kind  of  Communism.  The  prodigious  in- 
crease in  numbers  of  Unionism  has  its  dark  side ;  for 
much  of  it  is  the  result  of  bullying,  boycotting, 
strikes,  anti-social  and  inhuman  tyranny  to  destroy 


LAST  WORDS  127 

personal  freedom.  These  six  millions  are  no  more 
converts  to  Socialism  than  are  the  Russian  people 
converts  to  Leninism.  These  mass  meetings  of 
miners,  railway  men,  and  dockers  too  often  ring  with 
appeals  to  envy  and  malice,  with  false  accusations, 
wild  rumours,  and  a  venomous  mendacity  of  the  kind 
made  familiar  by  Soviet  Commissars  at  a  massacre  of 
bourgeois. 


With  all  my  heart  I  rejoice  in  the  immense 
improvement  "  in  the  working  lives  "  of  our  people. 
All  good  men  and  women  rejoice  in  it,  bless  it,  and 
work  for  it.  Rut  this  indispensable  material  progress, 
directly  due  to  Unionism,  has  been  soiled  by  a  deep 
moral  and  spiritual  degeneration  of  character.  In 
forty  years  Unionism  has  become  a  class- war,  de- 
graded by  the  moral  and  social  evils  inevitable  in  a 
class-war.  The  principle  of  forcing  a  minority — even 
a  majority — to  join  an  official  order  is  defended  by 
leaders  as  an  essential  duty.  The  cause  of  the 
"Trade"  as  superior  to  any  rights  of  the  public  or 
even  of  the  nation  is  paraded  as  if  it  were  a  sacred  law. 
The  resort  to  "  direct  action  "  as  a  means  of  penalis- 
ing their  fellow  citizens  till  they  get  their  money  is  a 
social  crime.  What  would  they  say  if  doctors,  nurses, 
and  undertakers  struck  work  for  another  15  per 
cent.?  And  when  "direct  action"  or  penalising 
their  fellow  citizens  is  used  to  force  the  Government 
to  change  its  foreign  policy,  it  is  the  Soviet  system 
in  full  cry.  Altogether,  Organised  Labour  stands 


128  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

charged  at  the  bar  of  Humanity  with  a  veiled  sym- 
pathy with  the  Bolshevist  dogma  of  Labour  domina- 
tion and  exclusive  mastery  of  Society,  with  whatever 
tends  to  the  violent  dissolution  of  the  British  Empire, 
with  a  friendly  indifference  to  the  orgies  of  plunder 
and  assassination  in  Ireland.  In  the  United  King- 
dom, in  Europe,  in  Asia,  Africa,  or  the  Empire,  the 
cause  of  Labour,  we  are  told,  is  the  one  thing  that 
counts,  or  which  working  men  ought  to  promote. 


The  avowed  aim  of  organised  Labour  now  is  not  to 
improve  "the  conditions  of  employment,"  but  to 
extinguish  Capitalism ;  and  Labour  now  is  absolute 
master  of  the  Constitution  if  it  chooses  to  act  in  con- 
cert. The  "dictatorship  of  the  proletariate"  means 
the  devotion  of  the  national  wealth  to  the  interests  of 
the  manual  labourers.  There  will  be  no  spare  capital 
in  the  hands  of  any  upper  or  middle  class  to  be  used 
for  social  and  charitable  purposes ;  there  will  be  no 
upper  or  middle  class  at  all.  We  need  not  discuss 
whether  this  is  a  good  or  a  bad  result.  Many  social 
reformers,  as  well  as  the  whole  order  of  workmen, 
look  on 'it  as  a  blessed  hope,  and  I  sympathise  with 
that  hope  myself.  But,  as  soon  as  it  comes  about, 
the  vast  sums  annually  given  to  relieve  disease,  in- 
firmity, and  destitution  will  have  to  be  found  else- 
where. The  parrot-cry  of  State-aid  is  obviously  futile 
in  the  ever-growing  danger  of  national  bankruptcy 
as  well  as  of  bureaucratic  incompetence.  The  cost  of 
maintaining  free  hospitals,  free  homes,  any  kind  of 


LAST  WORDS  129 

liberal  relief,  will  have  to  be  met  by  the  workmen 
themselves  out  of  their  societies  and  clubs.  But  as 
yet  workmen  have  not  learned  the  habit  of  giving. 
They  expect  '*  the  Rich  "  to  give,  and  they  want  to 
do  awav  with  "  the  Rich." 


We  hear  much  of  the  cry  of  distress  that  goes  up 
on  all  sides  from  the  hospitals  which  are  menaced  with 
bankruptcy  and  dissolution.  As  yet  this  cruel  end  of 
our  great  voluntary  institutions  is  heard  only  from  the 
principal  hospitals,  which  hope  to  find  temporary  help. 
But  let  us  look  at  this  problem  in  all  its  tremendous 
possible  breadth.  Not  only  are  these  splendid  fruits 
of  modern  civilisation  faced  with  bankruptcy,  but  all 
the  minor  forms  of  charitable  endowments  and  of 
social  benevolence  are  in  the  same  peril.  That  peril 
is  caused  by  two  general  and  increasing  forces  which 
are  transforming  modern  society.  The  first  is  the 
enormous  increase  of  all  prices — doubling  or  trebling 
the  values  everywhere.  The  other  is  the  general  and 
increasing  impoverishment  of  the  whole  order  of 
property  holders.  It  was  this  class  alone  which  year 
by  year  found  the  vast  sums  devoted  to  all  kinds  of 
charitable  endowments.  And  this  class  is  being  re- 
duced to  extreme  pressure  and  even  to  penury.  If 
the  social  revolution  designed  by  Socialism  were  to 
succeed,  this  class  would  end  in  extinction. 

****** 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  world  is  immensely  the 

poorer.      Some    fifty    or    sixty    thousand    millions 

9 


130  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

(£60,000,000,000)  of  wealth  has  been  lost ;  and  we 
have  wasted  at  least  two  or  three  years  of  our  national 
income.  Nothing  can  replace  this  huge  deficit  but 
production.  And  Labour  demands  are  making  pro- 
duction impossible. 


By  the  sudden  demand  of  double  and  treble  wages, 
by  breaking  contracts,  and  defying  discipline,  Labour 
is  grasping  at  the  exclusive  receipt  of  the  wrhole  profits 
of  industry.  The  result  is  that  capital  will  not 
embark  on  undertakings  of  which  the  whole  produce 
is  claimed  by  the  manual  \vorkers.  The  enormous 
wealth  invested  in  railways,  mines,  and  factories  is 
becoming  insolvent  and  unsaleable  book-debits,  for 
Labour,  dominant  in  the  Commons,  refuses  to  vote 
the  inevitable  rise  in  rates.  "  Direct  action  "  means 
the  government  of  this  Empire  by  excited  groups  of 
workmen,  obviously  ignorant  of  the  complications  of 
international  politics.  It  is  aiming  at  what  all  history 
proves  to  have  been  the  worst  of  all  forms  of  govern- 
ment, when,  as  at  Athens,  on  the  death  of  Pericles, 
noisy  bands  of  some  thousand  of  mob  orators  dragged 
down  their  State  to  ruin. 

****** 

Hitherto  the  bulk  of  all  these  "  voluntary  "  endow- 
ments has  been  found  by  "  the  upper  and  lower 
middle-class" — the  rentiers — retired  people  of  the 
educated  orders  living  on  invested  savings  and  in- 
herited property.  The  rich  and  the  speculators,  of 
whose  doings  the  Press  takes  note,  really  do  no  great 


LAST  WORDS  181 

part  of  *'  the  charities."  It  was  done  by  the  millions 
out  of  small  earnings  and  "  fixed  incomes."  But  the 
small  traders,  the  hard-worked  "professional  "  men, 
the  rentiers — "the  new  poor" — are  doomed  to  ex- 
tinction. They  can  hardly  get  "a  living"  as  it  is. 
The  "profiteering"  and  the  speculation  due  to  the 
war,  which  show  so  large  in  the  public  eye,  are  soon 
to  come  to  an  end.  They  never  did — and  never  will 
— do  much  in  charity  giving.  This  henceforth  will 
have  to  be  done  by  Labour.  Labour  does  not  yet 
realise  this.  In  time,  no  doubt,  it  will  realise  it.  But 
the  idea  of  a  workman  subscribing  his  guineas  to  a 
Hospital  or  a  Home  for  Incurables  sounds  like  a  jest. 
Their  societies,  which  deal  in  hundreds  of  millions, 
will  do  it  some  day.  But  till  "The  Day"  of  the 
emancipation  of  Labour  comes  there  will  be  cruel 
times  for  hospitals  and  all  forms  of  "  good  works  "  of 
relief  to  want  and  misery.  No  temporary  help,  no 
State  aid,  no  petty  charge  will  suffice.  Till  Labour 
learns  its  new  duty,  the  sick,  the  helpless,  and  the 
destitute  will  be  sorely  pinched. 


It  is  not  merely  the  Hospitals  and  Charities  which 
are  menaced  with  ruin,  until  the  People  in  the  mass 
undertake  their  support.  The  most  urgent  case  of 
all  is  that  of  Ministers  of  religion  of  all  the  different 
Churches.  The  celibate  Priesthood  of  the  Roman 
Church,  maintained  on  very  modest  lines  by  the  con- 
tinuous gifts  of  the  entire  congregation,  may  struggle 
on  even  in  these  times.  The  humble  and  less  literate 


182  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

Ministers  of  the  Free  Churches  will  survive.  But  the 
episcopal  Church  and  its  clergy  have  to  pass  through 
a  cruel  time  of  pressure,  in  which  many  of  their  better 
aspects,  and  some  of  their  worse  aspects,  will  be  lost. 
It  will  be  transformed — we  trust  not  extinguished — 
in  the  process.  The  country  vicarage  and  rectory, 
with  their  culture,  graces,  learning,  and  humanity, 
will  be  no  more  known.  Many  will  rejoice  that  these 
outworks  of  the  "  landed  gentry  "  will  be,  with  their 
ancient  "  patrons,"  only  a  memory  of  the  past.  And 
some,  too,  will  grieve  that  the  courtesy  and 
benevolent  help  of  the  parson  and  the  squire,  and  all 
the  charities  and  civilities  they  often  worked  together 
will  be  swept  away,  when  the  speculating  business 
man  and  the  popular  orator  have  succeeded  to  squire 
and  parson.  Labour,  no  doubt,  one  day,  by  its 
wonderful  co-operative  energy,  will  supply  the  village 
reading-room,  dispensary,  the  games,  the  holiday- 
making,  and  all  the  spiritual  education  of  the  ancient 
Church  of  their  fathers.  But  the  intervening  time 
before  Labour  has  learned  how  to  replace  what  it  is 
bent  on  destroying — this  will  be  a  hard  time  for  the 
old  poor  as  well  as  for  *'  the  new  poor." 


And  it  is  not  hospitals,  charities,  and  churches 
alone  that  will  suffer  if  the  extinction  of  capitalism 
and  middle-class  is  achieved  by  "  direct  action  "  secur- 
ing the  mastery  of  society  by  workmen.  Literature, 
learning,  science,  art,  and  culture  have  disappeared 
under  Bolshevism,  and  the  essential  aim  of  what  to- 


LAST  WORDS  188 

day  is  called  Socialism  is  the  prohibition  on  the 
accumulation  of  capital,  even  of  small  savings,  in  the 
hands  of  private  families.  Now,  any  general  view  of 
history,  even  a  biographical  dictionary,  will  show  that 
almost  all  forms  of  civilised  progress  have  been  bred 
and  nurtured  in  families  where  some  inherited  re- 
sources enabled  its  members  to  devote  their  living  to 
study,  to  thought,  to  poetry,  to  art.  All  these  must 
be  free.  They  cannot  be  produced  to  the  order,  or 
maintained  by  the  allowance,  of  a  workman's  club — 
a  Soviet,  in  fact.  We  may  hope  that  in  a  distant 
future  a  victorious  and  cosmopolitan  ergatocracy  will 
find  a  means  to  supply  the  intellectual,  moral,  and 
spiritual  needs  of  modern  civilisation,  but  the  passing 
of  capitalism  and  personal  property  to  communism 
and  the  supremacy  of  organised  Labour  will  be  a  pro- 
cess both  long  and  somewhat  painful  to  what  has  pre- 
sumed to  call  itself  "an  upper"  and  "a  middle 
class." 


The  impulse  of  the  reader  no  doubt  will  be  to  treat 
all  this  as  an  impossible  future,  and  the  warning  as 
that  of  an  alarmist.  It  is  quite  true  that  our  solid 
and  sensible  people  are  very  far  from  being  Leninists, 
and  have  no  sort  of  dream  of  abolishing  wages, 
employers,  and  capitalism.  But  the  course  which 
organised  Labour  is  taking  has  the  gradual  and  con- 
cealed effect  of  paralysing  and  drying  up  capital. 
The  tumultuous  interchange  of  values,  and  the 
sudden  blazing  up  of  emergency  industries  during 


184  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

the  war,  coupled  with  the  reckless  inundation  of 
paper  money,  caused  conspicuous  cases  of  profiteer- 
ing wealth,  and  a  general  impression  of  increased 
spending  power.  But  this  impression  is  a  mere 
illusion,  as  in  Russia,  wrhere  bank  notes  pass  by  the 
cwt. 


SEPTEMBER 

1920      - 
IX 

AT  a  time  of  unparalleled  confusion  in  Europ< 
and  in  the  world — along  with  complicated 
problems  at  home — it  is  the  part  of  a  good 
citizen  to  look  straight,  and  to  speak  straight,  if  he 
speak  at  all.  The  United  Kingdom,  the  Constitu- 
tion, the  Empire,  our  foremost  place  in  the  nations, 
were  never  before  in  such  peril  as  they  are  to-day  ;  but 
the  glamour  of  victory  and  the  show  of  prosperity 
blind  men's  eyes  to  the  perils.  At  the  same  time,  the 
unseen  menace  behind  is  unknown  to  the  public,  and 
they  are  amused  by  a  grandiose  stage  play  of  cosmo- 
politan pacification.  Why  do  all  these  conferences 
and  councils,  treaties  and  compacts,  come  to  nothing, 
so  that  the  so-called  "  peace  "  seems  to  breed  new 
wars?  Why  do  schemes  of  reforming  the  Constitu- 
tion end  in  mere  debates  and  essays?  Why  do 
treason,  rapine,  riot,  and  murder  trample  on  law  and 
government  in  Ireland?  In  one  word,  Britain  is  still 
busy  with  preposterous  tasks  which  it  is  utterly  unable 
to  perform ;  and  still  seeks  to  give  political  reality  to 
what  is  only  the  fading  dream  of  pedantic  idealists. 
On  the  other  hand,  these  cosmopolitan  visions  draw 

off  the  mind  of  statesmen  and  the  public  from  the 

135 


136  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

urgent  need  of  internal  problems.  And  as  to  foreign 
problems  as  well  as  Ireland,  the  public  does  not  see, 
and  the  statesmen  will  not  acknowledge,  the  latent 
two-fold  obstacle  which  makes  action  so  feeble, 
so  shifty,  so  futile. 


In  this  extraordinary  crisis  of  our  country  it  is  a 
duty  to  speak  without  reserve.  The  present  writer, 
entirely  detached  from  any  party  or  Parliamentary 
interest,  whose  utterances  involve  no  other's  responsi- 
bility, may  at  any  rate  say  what  he  thinks  plainly, 
without  fear  or  favour,  as  he  has  done  all  his  life.  The 
enormous  complications  of  the  situation  and  the 
multiplicity  of  incidents  and  interests  make  an  all- 
round  judgment  almost  impracticable — yet  a  one- 
sided judgment  is  worse  than  none  at  all.  If  a  man 
has  daily  read  and  weighed  the  news,  reports,  and 
statements  in  several  journals  of  different  party 
colour,  all  the  debates  in  both  Houses,  night  by  night 
from  beginning  to  end,  together  with  the  contents  of 
foreign  as  well  as  provincial  and  Irish  journals — even 
the  editorial  articles,  which  at  least  disclose  what  the 
writers  either  fear  or  wish  to  cover  up — then  he  must 
see  in  what  a  welter  is  the  world  and  our  country 
to-day ;  and  if  he  comes  to  any  conclusion  about 
policy,  he  will  not  do  so  in  ignorance  of  essential  facts. 
But  how  very  few,  even  of  those  who  take  interest  in 
politics,  can  pretend  to  do  this !  How  entirely  is  all 
this  knowledge  shut  off  from  the  twenty  million  men 
and  women  who  form  our  democracy  and  who  read 


LAST  WORDS  137 

nothing  but  what  some  party  journal  chooses  to  tell 
them,  or  know  nothing  but  what  someone  else  repeats 
to  them !  Our  people  really  live  in  utter  ignorance 
of  all  essential  facts,  and  yet  they  claim  to  settle 
everything,  if  not  by  "  direct  action,"  at  any  rate  by 
a  more  or  less  indirect  form  of  political  opinion. 


On  the  face  of  things,  in  the  fore-front  of  the  press 
news,  comes  the  execution  of  the  Treaty  and  the 
League  of  Nations,  which  is  fatally  bound  up  with  it. 
Now,  all  these  conferences,  councils,  agreements,  the 
assemblies,  commissions  and  reports,  are  empty  cere- 
monials and  parades  about  a  thing  which  has  no  life — 
no  force  in  it.  A  League  of  Nations,  which  the 
United  States  as  yet  officially  repudiates,  which  now 
treats  Germany  and  Russia  as  its  opponents  to  be 
feared,  which  consists  of  nations  each  struggling  to 
get  what  it  can  for  itself,  which  has  no  effective  force 
to  impose  its  will,  even  if  its  members  had  common 
objects — such  a  League  is  a  mere  theatric  spectacle 
to  amuse  the  people.  A  League  of  Nations  without 
America  is  an  army  in  uniform  but  without  any  arms. 
A  League  of  Nations  which  envy  and  suspect  each 
other,  and  have  different  and  incompatible  aims,  is  as 
futile  a  combination  as  would  be  a  universal  Church 
composed  of  Christians,  Jews,  Musulmans,  and 
Brahmans.  I  do  not  deny  that  it  is  a  noble  and  fruit- 
ful ideal  which  in  times  to  come  will  be  realised  and 
have  a  blessed  effect  upon  civilisation.  But  to-day  it 
is  premature  and  impossible.  I  do  not  doubt  that  it 


138  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

inspired  with  hopes  the  peoples  and  the  armies  during 
the  war,  and  was  sincerely  preached  and  believed  in 
by  leading  statesmen.  If  the  President  had  retained 
the  full  support  of  his  countrymen,  and  the  statesmen 
of  Europe  had  been  in  real  control  of  their  respective 
Governments,  perhaps  at  Christmas,  1918,  a  practical 
League  of  Nations  might  have  been  founded. 


The  occasion  was  lost ;  the  sacred  fire  of  humane 
aspiration  died  down,  and  eight  precious  months  were 
wasted  in  disputes  about  indemnities,  protection, 
formalities,  local  trifles,  and  the  impossible  task  of  re- 
settling a  shattered  world.  In  the  meantime  the  rela- 
tions of  victors  and  conquered  entirely  changed ;  in 
each  country  revolts  and  discord  broke  out,  largely 
by  the  effect  of  the  Covenant  itself  :  chaos,  famine, 
and  bankruptcy  ensued.  Yet  still  statesmen  confer, 
proclaim,  and  rush  about,  in  order  to  carry  out  formal 
pledges  to  which  they  set  their  seals  at  Versailles.  To 
execute  to  the  letter  every  clause  of  that  farrago  of 
grandiose  impracticabilities — whilst  at  home  ruin 
impends — is  the  Byzantine  folly  of  discussing  the 
Creed  whilst  the  enemy  is  at  the  gates.  The  urgent 
thing  now  is — not  to  keep  the  eyes  intent  on  the 
parchments  of  Versailles  and  St.  Germains — but  to 
see  how  the  safety,  prosperity,  and  honour  of  Britain 
can  be  secured  in  the  general  chaos — which  threatens 
our  country  with  the  worst  evils  it  has  known  in  its 
glorious  history. 


LAST  WORDS  139 

There  is  a  cry  now  to  close  the  Supreme  Council  and 
to  leave  things  to  the  League.  Well !  but  look  at 
realities,  and  be  not  misled  by  all  this  mystery  of  the 
Covenant,  Council,  and  Assembly,  subordinate  Com- 
mittees and  the  rest.  They  only  exist  on  paper,  and 
piles  of  reports  and  recommendations.  They  have  no 
power  to  act  at  all.  Strictly  speaking,  the  whole 
apparatus  as  yet  exists  only  in  draft  proposals.  There 
are  as  yet  no  mandates  at  all  legally  appointed.  The 
only  real  power  is  in  the  hands  of  the  British  and 
French  Prime  Ministers — with  the  Italian  Minister 
from  time  to  time  called  in  to  form  a  third.  This 
triumvirate  of  the  victorious  Powers,  who  alone  have 
powerful  armies  in  the  field,  virtually  decide  on  policy, 
and  summon  small  Powers  to  ratify  their  decisions. 
They  arrange  for  the  execution  of  the  Treaty  and  they 
distribute  mandates  to  each  other.  But  all  this,  to 
have  full  legal  authority,  ought  to  be  submitted  to  the 
League  and  formally  voted  by  it.  This  has  not  been 
done ;  and  the  Triumvirate  naturally  hesitate  to  sub- 
mit their  policy  to  a  miscellaneous  body  of  minor 
States  which  have  their  own  interests  to  consult.  The 
mandates  are  only  unauthorised  proposals  of  what  the 
principal  belligerent  Powers  would  have  done.  They 
formally  declare  that  they  do  not  intend  annexation, 
but  only  wish  to  help  the  native  people  to  govern 
themselves.  Unfortunately,  the  native  people  now 
violently  protest  they  do  not  want  help. 


Put  aside  for  a  time  Treaty  and  Covenant — at  least 


140  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

put  them  in  the  second  place.  The  urgent  thing 
now  is  the  best  road  to  safety  and  orderly  peace  for 
the  moment.  How  is  any  concert  of  nations  possible 
if  each  nation  has  its  own  object  ?  The  United  States, 
as  represented  by  its  President,  certainly  desired  the 
peace  of  the  world  :  to  be  achieved,  perhaps,  by  the 
"  freedom  of  the  seas  " — a  phrase  which  covered 
much.  Britain  had  no  imperial  aims,  though  the  war 
threw  into  its  lap  enormous  material  profit.  France 
never  did,  and  does  not  now,  seek  anything  but  her 
own  safety  and  compensations.  Italy  aims  only  at 
enlarged  frontiers  and  control  of  the  Adriatic  and  the 
Levant.  The  smaller  States  think  only  of  getting 
the  best  safeguards  from  their  neighbours  and  the 
largest  areas  they  can  obtain.  What  folly  to  hope  for 
peace  from  a  parchment  League  of  Nations,  when 
each  nation  is  bent  on  getting  all  it  can  for  itself — 
and  Britain  is  puzzled  how  to  keep  and  manage  what 
the  fortune  of  war  has  unexpectedly  flung  on  it,  and 
finds  itself  the  object  of  envy,  suspicion,  and  hatred 
because  fate  has  given  it  a  dominant  place  which  it 
neither  looked  for  nor  sought. 


The  Covenant  and  the  great  Wilsonian  League 
cannot  now  be  rudely  dropped ;  but  they  can  be 
cherished  as  a  fine  ideal  and  bright  hope  that  must  be 
kept  before  our  eyes  with  academic  theories,  but  not 
by  practical  action.  There  are  plenty  of  professors, 
learned  legists,  and  indeed  leading  M.P.'s — even 
Ministers — all  willing  and  able  to  do  this.  But 


LAST  WORDS  141 

statesmen,  with  urgent  dilemmas  on  their  hands, 
ought  to  leave  Utopias  to  the  men  of  ideas  and  devote 
their  whole  thoughts  to  realities  and  emergencies. 
The  alarming  condition  of  Europe  directly  concerns 
our  very  existence  as  well  as  general  peace — and  so  do 
the  restless  movements  in  the  East  and  our  Asiatic 
mandates.  Poland,  Russia,  Germany,  Turkey, 
Syria,  Mesopotamia,  all  bristle  with  problems  as  acute 
as  any  that  ever  occupied  diplomacy.  But  there  are 
domestic  problems  even  more  acute — Ireland,  the 
United  Kingdom,  the  Constitution  of  the  Empire, 
our  relations  with  France,  with  America,  the 
authority  of  Parliament,  the  claims  of  Labour,  with 
incessant  demands  and  threats  of  **  direct  action,"  of 
nationalisation,  the  Soviet  system,  the  imminence  of 
increased  prices,  the  paralysis  of  capital,  the  growth 
of  taxation,  the  extreme  dilemma  of  finance.  Now, 
this  mountain  of  tasks  is  too  much  for  one  mind,  how- 
ever powerful  and  swift. 


I  cannot  join  with  attacks  on  the  Prime  Minister  or 
his  colleagues.  I  doubt  if  the  country  seriously 
desires  to  displace  them ;  and  I  am  sure  that  if  either 
of  the  Opposition  parties  came  to  power,  they  would 
bring  us  to  immediate  disaster.  But  as  a  critic  of 
Government  ought  always  to  be  ready  with  an  alterna- 
tive policy,  I  venture  very  humbly  as  a  mere  outside 
bystander,  and  very  respectfully  as  a  well-wisher  to 
Mr.  Lloyd  George,  to  suggest  that  the  time  has  come 
for  him  to  take  the  traditional  place  of  a  Prime 


142  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

Minister,  i.e.,  in  Parliament ;  and  that  he  should  make 
our  home  problems  his  first  care.  There  are  ten  or 
twenty  such  problems  to  deal  with — any  one  of  which 
is  big  enough  to  occupy  the  whole  time  of  a  states- 
man. Parliament  is  losing  all  its  prestige  and 
efficiency,  and  is  leaving  the  field  of  practical  work 
open  to  the  advancing  Soviet  system.  The  continual 
absence  of  the  head  of  our  Government,  absorbed  in 
the  European  tangle,  is  having  a  paralysing  effect  on 
policy  similar  to  that  caused  by  the  illness  and  the 
sulking  of  Mr.  Wilson  on  the  policy  of  the  United 
States.  If  Parliamentary  government  is  to  be  main- 
tained, the  head  of  the  Government  must  be  con- 
tinuously in  Parliament. 


No  doubt  there  are  foreign  problems,  European, 
Asiatic,  African,  which  must  be  handled  in  some  way, 
under  the  general  direction  of  the  Prime  Minister. 
But  for  these  and  for  visits  abroad,  there  are  com- 
petent authorities  in  the  Government.  The  proper 
organ  for  these  is  the  Foreign  Secretary,  now  leader 
in  the  House  of  Lords.  Then  there  is  the  Colonial 
Minister,  not  to  mention  others.  Mr.  Balfour  seems 
devoted  to  the  League  of  Nations,  and  to-day  he 
should  regret  both  the  Italian  secret  treaty  and  his 
patronage  of  Zion.  The  Irish  rebellion — mainly  due, 
I  think,  to  the  delay  and  indecision  caused  by  the 
absence  and  pre-occupation  of  the  Prime  Minister,  is 
certainly  the  most  formidable  problem  of  our  time — 
one  of  the  most  formidable  in  the  entire  historv  of  the 


LAST  WORDS  143 

British  Empire.  Nothing  can  save  it  from  disaster 
but  genius,  courage,  and  insight,  and  all  these,  alone 
of  our  public  men,  the  Prime  Minister  possesses.  It 
will  need  all  his  powers,  all  his  time,  and  it  can  only 
be  done  whilst  his  personality  and  his  ideas  are  at  work 
in  the  midst  of  his  fellow-citizens,  and  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  where  the  issue  has  to  be  joined. 


In  all  our  history  there  never  was  a  crisis  of  such 
wide  extent  and  of  such  tremendous  consequences. 
The  public  and  the  Press  thunder  forth  incessant 
advice,  for  the  most  part  in  flat  contradiction.  No 
one  will  listen  to  any  reason  that  they  dislike,  nor 
believe  any  statement  which  opposes  their  views. 
But  there  are  two  very  sinister  facts  underlying  all 
public  action,  of  which  the  public  knows  nothing  and 
which  the  Press  thinks  it  better  to  ignore.  The  first 
is,  that  our  very  existence  and  the  success  of  any 
policy  requires  us  to  maintain  close  alliance  with 
France  and  good  understanding  with  America.  How- 
ever much  we  deprecate  policy  which  France  passion- 
ately holds  to  be  necessary  for  her  existence,  we  can- 
not oppose  it,  we  hardly  can  remonstrate  unless  in 
strict  privacy.  Whatever  international  outrages  on 
us  are  committed  by  the  Press  and  public  men  in 
America,  we  have  to  bear  them  in  silence.  There  are 
two  reasons  which  force  us  to  consider  American 
opinion  as  of  vital  importance.  The  first  is  that  we 
owe  to  U.S.A.  a  very  large  debt — more  than  half  our 
entire  income,  one-tenth  of  our  whole  national  debt — 


144  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

and  excited  feeling  in  America  might  call  for  its  imme- 
diate liquidation.  The  second  is  that  really  strong 
action  in  Ireland  would  inflame  party  passion  in 
America  to  a  point  which  their  statesmen  could  not 
control. 


In  addition  to  the  underlying  risk  of  inflaming 
American  opinion  by  asserting  government  in  Ireland 
is  the  still  more  formidable  danger  of  rousing  violent 
opposition  from  Labour.  Any  attempt  at  "  vigorous 
policy,"  i.e.,  now  military  occupation  of  the  island  in 
reality,  is  met  by  a  storm  of  protests  from  all  anti- 
ministerial  factions.  "  Labour  "  is  filled  with  ignor- 
ance, prejudice,  and  wild  battle-cries  about  Irish 
oppression,  and  Labour  in  its  bitter  hostility  to  all 
conservative  policy  is  more  or  less  supported  by  what 
remains  of  Liberal  dogmatism.  If  the  twenty 
millions  of  voters  who  are  now  impatient  and  factious 
were  to  be  united  against  the  one  or  two  millions  of 
real  Conservatives,  no  efficient  Government  could 
exist.  They  who  shout  out  to  break  Bolshevism,  to 
protect  Poland,  to  save  Armenia,  to  civilise  Syria  and 
Mesopotamia — above  all  to  put  down  Sinn  Fein  rebels 
— must  be  reminded  that  the'  effective  control  of 
British  policy  is  in  the  last  resort  in  the  hands  of  an 
incalculable  mass  of  electors,  whose  ruling  desire  is  to 
have  no  more  fighting,  no  show  of  militarism  at  home 
or  abroad,  who  suspect  any  tendency  to  imperial 
extension,  who  still  hold  on  to  obsolete  formulas  about 
the  oppression  of  Ireland  by  Britain — and  who  in  the 


LAST  WORDS  145 

main  close  their  minds  down  on  anything  which  seems 
to  delay  the  promise  of  the  universal  reign  of  Labour 
and  its  inheritance  of  the  effete  dominion  of  Capital. 

*  *          *  *          *          * 

Where  is  the  Covenant  now  ?  What  is  the  League 
of  Nations  doing  now?  The  fifteen  or  more  signa- 
tories drop  out  one  by  one  :  the  remainder  have  con- 
flicting interests  and  are  powerless  to  act,  even  if  they 
were  agreed  in  any  common  policy.  Of  the  Big  Four, 
America  withdrew  a  year  ago.  As  to  Italy,  she  all 
but  fought  with  Greece  over  their  respective  shares 
of  the  spoil  of  Austria  and  Turkey.  Desperate  efforts 
have  been  made  to  keep  England  and  France  together 
— even  cruel  sacrifices  and  constant  differences — for 
it  is  a  matter  of  life  and  death  to  both  of  us.  We 
had  to  suffer  France  to  overrun  Syria  and  to  break  our 
engagements  with  the  Arab  chiefs — to  abandon 
Armenians  in  Cilicia — to  prepare  an  era  of  unrest  and 
insurrection  from  the  Taurus  to  the  Persian  Gulf. 
Again,  we  had  to  allow  France,  or  some  French  influ- 
ence, to  push  the  Poles  on  to  engage  the  Russian 
nation,  to  hamper  us  in  all  our  attempts  to  make 
peace  with  Russia,  and  now  France  formally  declares 
what  is  in  effect  war  with  the  de  facto  Government  of 
Russia.  Alas !  The  dominant  idea  of  French  poli- 
ticians is  to  found  Poland  as  an  Eastern  curb  on 
German  ambition,  and  to  get  some  return  of  the 
enormous  sums  once  lavished  in  Russian  loans. 
Futile  and  dangerous  delusions — which  Britain  dares 
not  actively  oppose. 

*  *         *  *          *          * 


10 


146  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

This  cosmopolitan  chaos  has  re-acted  at  home  with 
revolutionary  violence.  The  Government,  Parlia- 
mentary institutions,  the  constitution,  industry,  our 
social  economy,  have  been  shaken  to  their  founda- 
tions. In  January,  1918,  I  wrote — "  the  war  of 
Nations  is  being  entangled  with,  is  merging  into,  the 
war  of  Class,  and  essentially,  between  those  who  hold 
capital  and  those  who  work  with  their  hands."  The 
Bolshevist  revolution  sent  *'  a  thrill  through  the 
masses  such  as  the  world  has  never  yet  known  " — 
"  there  is  coming  over  civilisation  a  change  even  more 
enormous  than  the  war  " — "  there  will  be  a  wholly 
new  social  order."  (Obiter  Scripta.  Pp.  1,  2,  3.) 
And  now  this  has  come  about,  mainly  in  consequence 
of  social  chaos  which  the  war  caused  and  by  the 
extravagant  Utopias  hatched  in  Washington  and 
acclaimed  in  Europe  as  a  new  gospel. 


As  the  head  of  the  British  Government  has  been 
absorbed  in  continental  politics  and  rarely  present  in 
Parliament,  succeeding  indeed  to  that  "  dictatorship 
of  the  Nationalities  "  which  Mr.  Wilson  enjoyed  on 
his  first  visit  to  Europe,  organised  and  unorganised 
Labour  formed  Soviets  which  put  themselves  into 
direct  relations  with  the  Government,  treated  them- 
selves as  the  real  Opposition,  and  forced  their  own 
views  with  menaces  that  were  by  no  means  negligible 
or  empty.  Government  no  longer  deals  with  the 
remnants  of  the  old  conventional  parties.  It  has  to 
deal  with  vast  Trade  Soviets  and  rebel  groups,  which 


LAST  WORDS  147 

regard  the  House  of  Commons  as  an  effete 
anachronism.  Consciously  or  unconsciously,  the 
Government,  threatened  daily  not  only  with  its  very 
existence  but  with  the  social  chaos  of  industrial  revolt, 
acquiesces  in  the  "  new  social  order,"  leaves  the  con- 
stitution impotent,  and  practically  inaugurates  the 
Soviet  system.  Are  we  about  to  recognise  the  Rus- 
sian Soviet  autocracy  and  to  see  at  home  the  dictator- 
ship of  our  domestic  proletariate  ? 

*          *          *  *          *          * 

It  is  now  clear  that  Lenin  and  Trotsky,  and  the 
miscreants  who  have  seized  power  in  Russia  and 
plundered  its  treasures,  are  working  to  ruin  this  bour- 
geois kingdom  and  destroy  the  Empire.  No  one  can 
doubt  that  widespread  Bolshevist  conspiracies  to  defy 
true  democratic  opinion,  and  to  break  up  the  Con- 
stitution by  treasonable  violence,  are  in  full  swing  in 
England,  Scotland,  and  probably  in  Ireland,  as  well 
as  in  the  Near  East  and  the  Far  East.  What  is  called 
the  *'  extreme  wing  of  organised  Labour  "  is  plainly 
Bolshevist,  is  an  outlying  force  of  the  Bolshevist  host. 
Now,  the  pressing  question  to-day  is  this — are  the 
promoters  and  members  of  these  "  Councils  of 
Action,"  of  the  "  direct  action  "  committees,  in 
alliance,  or  in  sympathy,  with  these  British  Bol- 
shevists? Are  the  Labour  M.P.'s,  honourable  and 
right  honourable,  is  the  Labour  Party,  as  a  body,  in 
league  with  this  British  Bolshevism?  If  the  official 
Labour  Party  does  not  approve  of  and  encourage  such 
treason,  why  does  it  not  disavow  it? 


148  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

Our  country,  the  Empire,  and  our  constitutional 
Government  are  now  being  attacked  by  a  Russian 
enemy  in  league  with  treason  at  home,  just  as  truly 
as  in  1914  it  was  being  attacked  by  the  Kaiser  and  his 
spies  and  agents  here.  How  is  it  possible  to  enter  into 
regular  relations  and  amity  with  a  Government  of  that 
kind?  Not  only  do  its  ministers  and  agents  preach 
the  most  deadly  enmity  to  our  country,  but  it  is 
proved  by  a  series  of  events  that  there  is  no  crime,  no 
trick,  no  fraud  which  they  are  not  ready  to  practise  in 
pursuit  of  their  schemes.  Contracts,  agreements, 
promises  of  theirs  are  worth  no  more  than  the  lies  of 

•cs. 

card-sharpers  on  a  racecourse,  or  of  burglars  and 
assassins  in  a  thieves'  kitchen.  If  private  citizens 
choose  to  do  business  with  Russian  merchants,  let 
them  be  free  to  do  it  at  their  own  risk.  But  it  would 
be  dangerous  and  discreditable  for  any  British  public 
authority  to  come  to  official  terms  with  any  agents  of 
a  gang  of  tyrants  who  are  carrying  on  a  secret,  but 
deadly,  war  with  our  country,  and  who  publicly  avow 
that  any  arrangements  they  may  make  are  only 
intended  to  delude  their  opponents.  Agents  of  such 
a  Power  ought  to  be  summarily  dismissed — if,  indeed, 
they  are  not  arrested  as  spies. 


We  have  come  now  to  the  parting  of  the  ways. 
Trade  Unionism,  which  has  a  fine  history  of  at  least 
seventy  years  of  constant  increase  in  power,  which  has 
given  untold  and  incalculable  benefits  not  only  to  the 
labouring  masses,  but  to  society  as  a  whole — is  it,  or  is 


LAST  WORDS  149 

it  not,  the  ally,  or  if  not,  at  least  the  friend,  of  a 
fanatical  enemy  of  our  country  which  is  working  by 
revolution  to  destroy  our  society  and  reduce  the  king- 
dom to  anarchy  and  civil  war?  If  Trade  Union 
members,  who  are  said  to  number  six  millions,  do  not 
mean  this,  the  time  has  come  for  them  to  show  them- 
selves against  it.  If  the  official  leaders  of  the  Labour 
Party,  who  speak  with  voices  so  different  at  West- 
minster from  what  they  utter  on  platforms,  do  not 
favour  Bolshevist  intrigues,  they  must  show  it  by 
deeds  as  well  as  words.  Are  these  new  "  Councils 
of  Action  ' '  going  to  be  Bolshevism  under  a  disguise  ? 
Is  "  direct  action  "  another  name  for  civil  war? 


The  confusion  in  Europe,  in  Asia,  at  home, 
increases  every  day,  and  I  take  up  my  pen  again  to 
express  my  anxieties  for  the  future  with  more  pre- 
cision. I  have  been  "  meliorist  "  if  not  optimist  all 
my  life,  and  by  every  conviction  and  experience  I  am 
inclined  to  believe  in  ultimate  progress  and  also  in  the 
essential  good  sense  of  the  popular  judgment.  But 
there  comes  a  time  when  our  good  hopes  are  destined 
to  mislead  us  and  when  the  popular  judgment  is  under 
spasmodic  excitement.  Such  a  time  is  this  from  two 
overwhelming  causes.  The  first  is  the  abysmal  over- 
turn of  ideas,  habits,  and  conditions  caused  by  the 
world- war,  which  shook  to  its  bases  every  nation,  class, 
and  government,  inducing  a  general  belief  that  all  had 
to  be  reconstructed  de  novo.  The  second  is  that  the 
necessities  of  war  involved  the  direct  appeal  to 


150  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

organised  Labour  in  all  its  forms,  whilst  the  sudden 
and  enormous  increase  in  the  electorate  took  the 
ultimate  control  of  the  Kingdom  and  the  Empire 
away  from  those  who  had  some  experience  and  know- 
ledge of  political  problems  and  handed  it  over  to  those 
who  had  no  knowledge  or  experience  at  all.  The 
result  of  an  electric  atmosphere  among  men  and  a 
vast  change  of  power  into  new  hands  has  produced  a 
silent,  unobserved  but  radical  revision  of  the  British 
Constitution.  We  are  coming  under  a  Soviet  system. 


It  is  usual  to  charge  this  upon  the  present  Govern- 
ment, and  especially  on  the  Prime  Minister ;  and  it 
cannot  be  denied  that  they  have  done  much  to  produce 
this  change,  or  at  least  to  accept  or  submit  to  it.    But 
they  are  not  at  all  the  authors  of  the  change,  nor  are 
they  responsible  for  it,  inasmuch  as  it  was  forced  on 
them  by  the  condition  of  things  and  by  our  new  ultra- 
democratic  electoral  system.    The  antiquated  adminis- 
trative and  parliamentary  machinery  of  our  Constitu- 
tion is  utterly  unstiited  both  to  states  of  war  and  of 
revolution.      And  we  are  slow  to  recognise  that  for 
most  social,  economic  and  governing  purposes  the 
state  of  war  and  of  revolution  practically  continues 
still.       Our  electoral  system  is  at  present  the  most 
ultra-democratic  in  the  world — nothing  remains  but 
to  give  votes  to  boys  and  girls  at  school.       Neither 
France  nor  the  United  States  have  anything  like  such 
an  electorate.       France  and  the  United  States  each 
have  a  very  effective  Senate.      We  have  none,  but  a 


LAST  WORDS  151 

pageant  under  sentence  of  being  scrapped.  France 
and  the  United  States  each  has  a  written  Constitution 
— both  of  them  in  my  opinion  superior  to  our  own. 
Ours  is  a  fluid  or  elastic  body  of  statutes,  practices 
and  traditions  which  the  mob  orators  say  may  easily 
have  the  Soviet  system  engrafted  on  to  it,  may  indeed 
be  superseded  by  the  Soviet  system. 


A  new  Constitution  could  be  voted  in  a  few  nights 
by  a  bare  majority  of  the  House,  elected  by  twenty 
millions  of  men  and  women  utterly  unversed  in 
political  problems.  On  the  other  hand,  the  industrial 
workers  are  organised  in  Great  Britain  with  a  strength 
and  a  discipline  far  greater  than  the  workers  of 
America,  France,  or  Germany.  British  Trade 
Unions  possess  wealth,  cohesion,  and  opportunities 
beyond  any  industrial  societies  in  the  world.  They 
are,  indeed,  far  the  most  powerful  social  force  in  the 
country.  Any  British  Government,  dependent  night 
by  night  on  a  simple  vote  of  a  single  House,  is  forced 
to  attend  to  the  claims  of  these  tremendous  trade 
armies,  and  whenever  these  are  agreed  among  them- 
selves a  Government  has  to  yield  with  more  or  less 
decent  show  of  qualification  or  resistance.  The 
instinct  of  the  Prime  Minister  always  recognises  real 
forces. 


We  are  so  much  accustomed  to  look  on  our  old 
institutions  as  eternal,  so  little  given  to  follow  any- 


152  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

thing  to  its  logical  consequences,  that  the  ordinary 
man  treats  with  a  smile  contingencies  which  he  thinks 
to  be  far  too  tremendous  to  be  possible.  He  thought 
the  same  of  the  war  in  July,  1914,  and  of  the  rule  of 
Lenin  and  Trotsky  down  to  1919.  The  average 
citizen  in  easy  circumstances  will  not  see  that  an 
entirely  new  social  atmosphere  has  been  created  on 
the  habitable  globe,  as  if  from  pole  to  pole  it  was  over- 
charged with  electric  cycles.  Such  new  ideas,  hopes, 
courage,  and  ambition  have  never  been  infused  into 
thousands  of  millions  of  men  and  women  in  such  mass 
and  over  such  range  of  area  and  clime.  I  am  not  one 
to  regret  or  complain  of  all  this  rejuvenescence  of 
humanity.  But  I  do  say,  Recognise  its  reality,  and 
understand  its  force.  Do  not  think  that  all  is  well — 
all  is  as  before — all  will  come  right.  No  !  not  if  we 
all  rest  on  our  old  ways  and  shut  our  eyes  to  the  new 
spirit.  They  say  that  in  Ireland  business,  amusement, 
life,  and  pleasure  seem  to  thrive  outwardly  without  a 
check  or  a  blot,  but  assassination,  treason,  insur- 
rection, and  conspiracy  work  incessantly  beneath  the 
outward  show  of  peace,  order,  and  prosperity.  Some- 
thing of  the  kind  may  be  going  on  here  also. 


OCTOBER 

-  1920  - 


X 


CTTHE  Life  of  Lord  Courtney,  by  Mr.  G.  P. 
A  Gooch  (Macmillan  and  Co.,  1920),  is  at  once 
a  faithful  portrait  of  an  eminent  public  man 
and  an  invaluable  contribution  to  the  political  history 
of  our  time.  My  own  close  relations  with  Leonard 
Courtney  lasted  for  exactly  sixty  years,  and  I  was 
keenly  engaged  with  many  of  the  causes  and  move- 
ments to  which  he  devoted  his  life.  We  had  common 
friends,  often  wrote  in  the  same  organs  of  public 
opinion,  and  at  times  stood  on  the  same  platforms. 
Now  and  then  I  warmly  supported  and  followed  his 
lead  :  and  again  I  engaged  in  vehement  opposition  to 
his  chosen  causes.  No  man  of  our  time  took  a  nobler 
part  in  resisting  the  reckless  imperialism  which  led  to 
incessant  wars  in  India,  in  Egypt,  in  South  Africa; 
and  in  all  these  I  and  my  friends  were  proud  to  regard 
him  as  their  trusted  chief.  On  the  other  hand,  his 
dogmatic  creed  of  self-help,  of  proportional  repre- 
sentation, of  woman's  suffrage,  and  of  pacifism  was 
alien  to  all  my  deepest  beliefs.  At  the  root  of  our 
two  minds  there  was  an  ingrained  antagonism  between 
Courtney's  individualism  and  our  ideal  of  social 

humanity.    Thus  it  is  that  with  a  truly  impartial  judg- 

'53 


154  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

ment  I  offer  my  tribute  to  his  public  career  as  that  of 
a  great  citizen  whose  courage,  tenacity,  and  lofty 
spirit  did  honour  to  the  highest  traditions  of  English 
public  life.  His  life  from  first  to  last,  of  which  this 
book  is  a  faithful  record,  is  a  story  of  devotion  to 
patriotism,  honour,  good  faith,  and  an  almost 
romantic  spirit  of  personal  sacrifice. 


The  point  in  this  story  which  specially  interests  me 
is  this.  Here  is  a  man  of  great  powers,  acknowledged 
to  be  of  eminent  public  service,  who  continually  re- 
fuses office,  even  of  the  most  tempting  sort,  who  is 
constantly  rejected  and  fails  in  his  aims,  solely  because 
of  his  stern  independence  of  mind,  and  his  stoical 
resolve  to  suffer  none  of  his  convictions  to  be  sacrificed 
to  party.  He  refuses  office  in  which  he  would  be 
specially  useful,  he  votes  against  his  party,  he  resigns 
his  place  in  the  Government,  he  makes  it  impossible 
to  enter  a  Cabinet,  and  he  passes  the  last  eighteen 
years  of  his  public  life  as  a  wholly  independent  critic 
of  Government  outside  of  all  party  connections.  This 
was  because  nothing  could  tempt  him  to  yield  a  jot 
of  his  cherished  principles,  even  to  place  himself  where 
he  would  be  unable  publicly  to  assert  them.  I  need 
not  say  how  highly  I  honour  such  steadfastness, 
worthy  of  an  Aristides  or  a  Cato,  how  much  I  value 
such  outspoken  courage  in  our  public  life.  But  the 
moral  I  draw  is  this — that  the  true  place  for  such  inde- 
pendence is  outside  of  Parliament,  free  from  all  party 
ties,  devoid  of  all  ambition  for  office.  It  is  of  the  best 


LAST  WORDS  155 

interests  of  the  nation  that  it  should  have  such  abso- 
lutely free  and  brave  politicians  and  critics.  But  they 
must  stand  aloof  from  party  and  from  office  :  their 
strength  lies  in  opinion,  not  in  force.  They  have  to 
touch  the  conscience,  not  to  make  laws  :  they  must 
keep  clear  of  the  party  discipline.  As  was  the  case  of 
Mill — even  of  Burke — the  chief  part  of  Courtney's 
public  service  was  done  outside  the  bounds  of  party 
and  office.  Would  that  all  could  see  how  impossible 
it  is  to  serve  both  ideal  convictions  and  official  place. 


Mr.  Gooch's  book  gives  us  a  faithful  record  of  Lord 
Courtney's  public  career ;  but  it  is  not  at  all  limited 
to  that,  for  to  a  great  extent  it  is  the  history  of  the 
political  world  in  which  Courtney  took  part  during 
more  than  half  a  century.  As  a  strict  biography  of 
a  politician,  this  so  far  detracts  from  the  life-like  por- 
trait of  a  personality — all  the  more  that  Courtney 
himself  had  a  very  minor  action  on  the  policy  which 
he  so  often  criticised  and  sought  to  influence.  In 
literary  vivacity,  therefore,  this  very  industrious  and 
accurate  memoir  is  far  from  a  success.  There  is  too 
much  about  humdrum  Parliamentary  tactics  and  for- 
gotten and  forgetable  personalities.  And  this  also 
detracted  from  the  biography  of  Sir  Charles  Dilke. 
The  heroic  standard  of  Courtney's  principles  is  too 
often  obscured  by  tiresome  details  from  persons  whom 
he  did  not  convince,  and  who  certainly  never  con- 
vinced him.  In  this  volume  there  are  printed,  more 
or  less  in  full,  no  less  than  seventy-eight  letters  from 


156  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

others,  many  of  them  trivial,  complimentary,  and  out- 
side his  proper  work.  Very  few  of  these  letters  have 
any  literary  value,  nor  are  Courtney's  own  letters 
specially  distinguished  in  form.  All  those  House  of 
Commons  tactics  and  friendly  courtesies  extend  the 
bulk  and  dim  the  vivid  impression  of  a  man  of  rare 
virtue  and  power,  though  they  will  be  most  useful 
some  day  to  the  historian  of  the  Victorian  age. 


A  new  history  of  philosophy  by  the  Cambridge 
Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  cannot  but  attract 
students  of  modern  thought,  and  they  will  turn  with 
great  expectations  to  the  History  of  English 
Philosophy,  by  W.  R.  Sorley,  Litt.D.,  etc.  (Univer- 
sity Press,  8vo.,  1920).  My  own  expectations,  I  con- 
fess, have  not  been  entirely  satisfied.  The  field  of 
the  inquiry  is  too  limited  in  area,  in  time,  in  language. 
The  method  of  the  inquiry  seeks  rather  to  state  dates, 
facts,  and  schools,  and  to  give  short  summaries 
of  numerous  writings,  rather  than  to  expound  definite 
judgment  on  the  value  of  each  school  and  philosopher 
in  aiding  in  the  evolution  of  thought.  Again,  the 
enumeration  of  an  immense  number  of  different 
theories  leaves  the  reader  waiting  to  be  informed  what 
in  the  author's  judgment  is  the  essential  outcome  of 
this  mass  of  learning,  and,  above  all,  what  is  the 
author's  own  point  of  view  in  philosophy.  He  tabu- 
lates with  great  industry  and  precision  the  doctrines 
of  some  hundred  and  twenty  philosophers,  who  for  the 
most  part  differ  widely  from  each  other,  but  we  do  not 


LAST  WORDS  157 

see  with  which  of  them  he  concurs  and  how  he  would 
class  himself.  The  Chronological  Tables  and  the 
bibliography  occupy  no  less  than  seventy  pages,  and 
extend  from  A.D.  1516  to  1918.  Out  of  this  vast 
library  of  learning,  in  what  solid  body  of  truth  has 
Professor  Sorley  himself  found  salvation  and  offers  us 
as  sound  reality  ? 


The  field  of  the  inquiry  is  too  limited  in  time.  It 
practically  starts  with  Francis  Bacon's  Advancement 
of  Learning  in  1605.  The  result  of  this  is  to  reduce 
to  bare  mention  the  philosophers  of  the  Middle  Ages 
and  of  the  Renaissance  from  Roger  Bacon  in  the  thir- 
teenth century  down  to  William  Gilbert  in  the  six- 
teenth century.  But  Roger  Bacon  is  surely  one  of 
the  greatest  of  English  philosophers,  the  peer  of 
Francis  Bacon,  Hobbes,  Locke,  and  Hume.  But 
Roger,  Duns  Scotus,  and  Ockham  are  hurried  over 
with  a  page,  or  half  a  page,  whilst  Henry  More  has  ten 
pages  and  Bentham  has  twenty  pages.  Surely,  too, 
Gilbert  is  of  prime  importance  in  any  history  of  Eng- 
lish philosophy,  yet  he  is  reduced  to  a  perfunctory 
single  page,  apparently  because  he  wrote  in  Latin. 
Why  should  a  history  of  philosophy  be  limited  to  the 
English  language  ?  This  limitation  points  to  a  serious 
defect  in  the  professor's  method.  Gilbert,  like  Roger 
Bacon,  as  did  Descartes  and  at  times  Francis  Bacon, 
wrote  in  Latin,  because  their  whole  work  was  asso- 
ciated with,  and  was  addressed  to,  European  thinkers, 
not  to  those  of  their  own  nation.  That  English 


158  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

philosophy  only  began  in  1600,  and  ended  in  1900,  is 
a  double  misconception,  as  is  the  assumption  that  it 
appeals  only  to  those  who  read  our  language. 
Philosophy  has  no  limit  of  age,  of  language,  or  of  race. 
To  confine  it  to  nationality,  century,  or  literary  form 
is  radically  to  disfigure  it. 


The  initial  mistake  was  to  undertake  a  history  of 
English  philosophy.  There  is  not,  and  there  never 
has  been,  any  truly  English  philosophy,  nor  English 
science,  nor  English  astronomy  or  physics.  All  the 
higher  developments  of  knowledge  and  research  are 
not  only  European,  but  now  are  cosmopolitan.  And 
this  is  especially  true  of  the  crown  of  all  knowledge  in 
philosophy.  Our  own  philosophy  did  not  begin  with 
the  first  book  in  English,  and  it  did  not  end  with  the 
reign  of  Victoria.  And  why  English  rather  than 
British  philosophy,  seeing  that  large  chapters  are 
devoted  to  Hume,  Adam  Smith,  Thomas  Reid, 
Dugald  Stewart,  Sir  William  Hamilton,  and  the 
recent  Scottish  school.  The  author,  himself  a  dis- 
tinguished Scot  of  eminent  Scottish  academies,  seems 
inclined  to  the  recent  phase  of  Northern  philosophy 
which  in  the  twenty  years  since  Victoria  has  given  us 
such  an  abundance  of  critical,  if  not  of  original, 
philosophy.  It  seems  odd  that  so  distinguished  a 
member  of  that  race  and  school  should  open  his  history 
of  philosophy  with  an  English  book,  should  entitle 
the  study  a  history  of  English  philosophy,  and  should 
close  it  with  the  end  of  an  English  sovereign.  As  was 


LAST  WORDS  159 

said  of  a  lady's  costume,  il  commence  trop  tard,  et  il 
finit  trop  tot. 


The  book  will  be  very  useful  to  students,  especially 
to  those  who  are  being  crammed  for  examinations,  for 
it  gives  the  dates,  chief  works,  and  a  summary  of  the 
views  of  one  hundred  and  twrenty  English  philoso- 
phers, of  whom  few  undergraduates  know  the  names, 
and  of  whose  views  they  may  very  well  remain 
ignorant.  The  so-called  *'  history  "  is,  in  fact,  a  cata- 
logue or  summary  of  works  on  philosophy  published 
in  English  between  1600  and  1900;  but  it  is  not  a 
weighty  estimate  of  the  permanent  result  of  the 
thinkers  named.  Indeed,  a  work  purporting  to  deal 
with  the  dominant  ideas  of  three  centuries,  but  which 
said  little  or  nothing  about  French,  German,  and 
Italian  thought  in  those  ages,  their  influence  upon 
British  thought,  and  the  reaction  of  British  thought 
on  them,  nothing  of  Descartes,  Leibnitz,  Diderot, 
Kant,  Hegel,  and  practically  nothing  of  the  influence 
abroad  of  Bacon,  Hobbes,  Locke,  Hume,  Bentham, 
and  Mill — such  a  work  loses  sight  of  the  very  central 
idea  of  philosophy.  The  French,  the  German,  and 
the  American  text-books  do  this.  The  now-forgotten 
history  of  philosophy  of  G.  H.  Lewes  (1880)  did  this. 
Such  a  book  as  that  of  Mr.  Archibald  Alexander 
(1907),  which  in  600  pages  treated  philosophy  from 
Thales  to  Thomas  H.  Green,  did  this.  But  the  Moral 
Professor  in  Cambridge  avoids  this  indispensable 
task. 


160  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

A  new  translation  of  the  Agamemnon  always  gives 
me  the  occasion  to  re-read  the  drama  which  I  have 
long  held  to  be  the  grandest  of  all  tragedies  in  any 
language  or  age.  And  now  Professor  Gilbert  Murray 
has  published  his  version,  in  rhyming  verse  with  notes 
(G.  Allen  and  Unwin,  cr.  8vo.,  pp.  91).  The  Pre- 
face, Stage-directions,  analyses  of  the  Chorus,  and 
Notes  are  most  valuable  aids  to  the  English  reader, 
and  in  every  sense  worthy  of  Dr.  Murray's  high  office 
and  great  reputation.  The  version  of  the  Greek 
original  may  hold  its  own  with  the  well-known  trans- 
lations in  prose  or  verse  by  Dr.  Verrall,  1889,  and  of 
Mr.  Morshead,  1899 ;  and  where  Dr.  Murray  differs 
from  them,  perhaps  scholars  will  prefer  to  follow  him. 
The  volume  altogether  will  be  of  real  help  to  the 
student  of  ^Eschylus ;  and  it  will  certainly  have  the 
same  vogue  as  Dr.  Murray's  translations  of  Euripides 
and  of  the  CEdipus  and  Frogs.  As  a  metrical  trans- 
lation of  the  most  tremendous  of  all  tragedies,  it  has 
to  compete  with  an  immense  number  of  others — the 
London  Library  alone  has  more  than  twenty.  Two 
famous  poets  have  made  egregious  failures.  Brown- 
ing's is  queer  and  uncouth ;  Fitzgerald's  is  mere 
"  variations  "  on  the  sacred  text  of  ^Eschylus. 


I  doubt  if  Dr.  Murray's  method  suits  ^Eschylus  as 
well  as  it  suits  Euripides.  It  is  too  modern,  vernacu- 
lar, and  Browningesque  at  times  to  fit  the  Pheidian, 
Biblical  majesty  of  the  Oresteia.  Rhyme  is  out  of 
place  in  the  mighty  declamation  of  these  iambics  ;  and 


LAST  WORDS  161 

in  the  Stichomuthia,  or  "  capping  "  of  alternate 
lines — always  a  doubtful  device  to  us — the  rhyming  is 
almost  comic.  The  perpetual  use  of  "  God  "  for 
"  the  gods,"  and  even  "  'Fore  God,"  jars  on  my 
ear ;  and  there  are  too  many  daring  new  compounds 
like  "  Ghastly-wed,"  "  Gold-changer,"  "  bird- 
throated,"  '*  third-thrower."  It  is  risky  to  imitate 
the  poet's  new  mint;  but  I  admit  that  "  Hell  in 
cities,  Hell  in  ships"  for  the  famous  iXsva?  eXEictaXt; 
is  a  daring  and  successful  stroke,  from  which  Milman 
admits  that  he  shrank.  Altogether  Dr.  Murray's 
work  is  an  honour  to  Oxford  scholarship ;  but  a  verse 
translation  of  a  sublime  poet  should  be  poetry.  And 
for  my  part  I  cannot  part  with  my  Dean  Milman 
which  I  have  enjoyed  for  fifty-five  years.  Milman 
was  himself  a  poet,  albeit  of  early  Victorian  type.  His 
Translation  of  the  Agamemnon  and  of  the  Bacchanals 
and  numerous  Greek  lyrics  (John  Murray,  illustrated, 
1865)  is,  to  my  mind,  a  rare  introduction  to  Greek 
poetry.  And  his  version  of  the  Agamemnon,  if  less 
scholarly,  is  more  like  the  spirit  of  Greek  poetry  than 
any  of  those  by  recent  hands. 


One  of  the  most  striking  facts  of  our  time  is  the 
incessant  efforts  that  are  made  to  bring  about  some 
religious  harmony — even  a  union  of  various  Churches. 
Things  are  being  done  by  ministers,  clergy,  and  even 
prelates,  which  would  have  been  thought  intolerable 
down  to  the  close  of  the  Victorian  era.  And  the 
purely  secular  Press  lias  opened  its  columns  to  debates 


ii 


162  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

and  controversies  as  to  church  membership  and  the 
need  of  development  in  religion.  There  is  ample 
ground  to  account  for  all  this.  The  war  shook  all  the 
conditions  of  life  over  the  whole  globe  with  a  disturb- 
ing force  greater  than  any  experienced  by  the  life  of 
man.  The  habitable  world  from  the  Alaskan 
promontory  to  the  Indian  Ocean  was  drawn  into  the 
vortex.  At  the  same  time  the  relations  of  social  order 
and  industrial  discipline  were  stirred  to  their  founda- 
tions. The  essential  unity  of  humanity  was  revealed 
as  it  had  never  before  been  made  so  manifest.  And 
the  universal  uprooting  of  society  drove  men  to  ask 
the  question — if  religion  could  not  do  something  to 
find  an  eirenicon  of  mankind. 


To  the  man-in-the-street,  to  common  sense — cer- 
tainly to  the  agnostic — it  would  seem  that  all  these 
efforts  have  been  futile.  As  a  keen-sighted  dignitary 
of  the  Church  reminds  them,  what  hope  of  union  of 
Protestant  churches  is  there  if  prelates  insist  on 
Episcopacy  and  the  antique  Creed?  It  is  as  if  pur- 
posely meant  to  exclude  all  Presbyterians,  all 
Unitarians,  as  well  as  the  vast  body  of  religious  per- 
sons who  would  call  themselves  Christians,  but  would 
not  submit  to  have  their  faith  limited  by  any  dogmatic 
creed,  whether  ancient  or  modern.  And  what 
glimmer  of  union  is  there  between  any  Protestant 
communion  and  one  of  which  the  essence  is  the  miracle 
of  the  real  presence  and  the  sanctification  of  the  priest 
as  the  miracle-worker?  To  common  sense  it  would 


LAST  WORDS  163 

seem  that  no  reunion  of  Christians  can  advance  a  step 
whilst  there  is  no  real  agreement  as  to  the  source  and 
authority  of  the  Scriptures,  as  to  the  definite  meaning 
of  the  Creed,  and  especially  as  to  the  nature  of  Christ, 
and  the  truth  of  His  birth,  life  and  death.  It  is  no 
use  to  talk  about  Christian  reunion  if  you  are  willing 
to  leave  all  this  in  the  air. 


If  prelates  and  theologians  are  too  rigid  in  their  con- 
ditions of  religious  union,  there  are  many  able  and 
excellent  leaders  of  thought  whose  ideas  of  religion 
are  noble  in  spirit  but  intellectually  vague.  I  was 
attracted  to  a  new  volume  by  Dr.  Bosanquet,  a  very 
distinguished  philosopher  and  moralist.  What 
Religion  Is  (Macmillan  and  Co.,  1920,  sm.  8vo.,  pp. 
81)  is  a  beautiful  book,  with  almost  all  of  which  I 
should  feel  in  sympathy,  if  I  were  to  vary  a  few  names 
and  phrases.  But  my  difficulty  is  to  understand  what 
exactly,  in  plain  words,  the  writer  means.  In  his 
opening  sentence  he  raises  what  he  so  finely  calls  "  the 
S.O.S.  of  humanity  " — "  what  must  I  do  to  be 
saved  ?  '  The  answer  seems  to  be — You  are  saved  if 
you  have  religion.  True! — but  what  religion? 
Something  that  you  hold  as  supreme !  Yes !  but  what 
is  that  ?  It  is  as  much  as  to  say — You  are  saved  if  you 
have  X.  This  indefinable  X  runs  through  the  whole 
book.  "  In  the  unity  of  love  and  will  with  the 
supreme  good  you  are  saved — you  are  free  and  you  are 
strong."  But  what  is  the  supreme  good  and  how  am 
I  to  reach  it?  "  Be  a  whole,  or  join  a  whole."  This, 


164  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

he  says,  is  religion.  "  We  must  not  let  go  our  main 
grasp  of  the  values — love,  beauty,  truth."  But  that 
is  what  all  who  reason  about  religion  have  said  from 
St.  Paul  to  Auguste  Comte.  The  formula  would 
cover  the  Pope,  General  Booth,  the  Chief  Rabbi,  the 
Sheikh-ul-Islam  and  a  Chinese  Mandarin.  As  Aris- 
totle said  of  Plato :  "It  is  beautiful,  but  is  it 
practical?  " 


Heartily  accepting  this  formula  of  Dr.  Bosanquet, 
our  own  faith,  as  I  have  often  tried  to  explain,  is  this. 
The  business  of  religion  is  not  so  much  to  tell  men 
what  goes  on  in  Heaven,  and  how  to  get  there  when 
we  leave  this  earth — but  rather  to  tell  men  how  to  do 
their  duty  whilst  they  are  here  :  and  what  the  brother- 
hood of  man  really  requires  them  to  do  one  to  another. 
Unhappily,  all  forms  of  Protestant  Christianity  are 
far  too  "  spiritual  "  to  do  anything  of  this  kind. 
Heaven,  not  earth,  is  their  sphere.  Rome  at  times 
does  something,  too  often  on  the  wrong  side,  in  the 
wrong  way.  The  Catholic  Church  once  did  much ; 
and  so  did  some  Protestant  churches  in  the  day  of  their 
power.  But  to-day  they  are  silent,  and  protest  that 
their  sacred  office  has  nothing  to  do  with  things  social, 
industrial,  political,  or  national.  So  say  Baptists, 
Unitarians,  Churchmen,  and  Romanists,  at  least  in 
England,  for  they  fear  that  their  congregations  would 
disappear  if  they  presumed  to  meddle  with  mundane 
things.  So  they  talk  of  nothing  but  Heaven,  whilst 
the  masses  are  ever  less  interested  in  it  as  a  matter  of 


LAST  WORDS  165 

vital  concern.  There  will  be  no  real  peace  on  earth 
until  there  is  promise  of  a  common  religion  based  on 
scientific  certainties  which  all  can  accept,  and  training 
men  from  childhood  to  practise  that  personal  and 
social  conduct  in  life  which  is  at  once  their  duty  and 
their  true  happiness. 


An  amazing  example  of  the  way  in  which  Obscur- 
antism lifts  its  old  head  at  any  new  step  taken  in  the 
progress  of  science  is  to  be  seen  in  the  eagerness  of 
metaphysico-theology  to  make  a  hit  out  of  the  novel 
Einstein  theory  of  physics.  The  famous  professor  has 
proposed  a  new  development  to  the  geometric  condi- 
tions of  the  world,  which  so  far  high  scientific 
authority  and  recent  observations  seem  to  justify. 
Thereupon  certain  mystics  in  what  they  call 
philosophy  and  theology  cry  out :  See  how  rotten  and 
treacherous  a  foundation  is  your  boasted  science ! 
Since  Euclid,  Newton,  and  Darwin  were  all  wrong, 
let  us  return  again  to  our  sublime  and  antique  fancies, 
and  put  no  trust  in  their  pretended  scientific  certain- 
ties. Long  ago  Mr.  Arthur  J.  Balfour  started  this 
red-herring  across  the  chase  of  Truth ;  which  I  then 
described  as  "  sub-cynical  pessimism,"  "  a  kind  of 
despairing  quietism."  Serious  men  of  science  never 
imagined  their  knowledge  to  be  complete  or  final,  even 
in  their  own  special  branch,  and  have  always 
been  willing  to  hail  novel  improvements  and  cor- 
rections. Like  Newton,  they  knew  they  were  only 
picking  up  solid  fragments  on  the  shore  of  a  bound- 


166  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

less  sea.  But  it  is  a  comical  form  of  muddle-headed- 
ness  which  fancies  the  discovery  of  a  new  shell  or  an 
unknown  bit  of  rock  proves  all  that  has  yet  been 
gathered  in  to  be  worthless. 


Dr.  Einstein  himself  has  now  given  to  the  English 
reader  his  own  account  of  his  theory  in  what  he  calls 
the  simplest  form — Relativity,  A  Popular  Exposi- 
tion, translated  by  Dr.  R.  Lawson  (Methuen  and 
Co.,  12mo.,  pp.  138).  Now,  "  the  average  reader," 
so  addressed,  will  not  be  able  to  master  this  learned 
book  unless  he  is  fairly  familiar  with  recent  physics, 
and  especially  the  modern  development  of  the 
geometry  of  four  dimensions.  In  the  next  place,  let 
the  average  reader  be  reassured  that  the  new  doctrine 
of  relativity  concerns  those  who  work  inter  apices  on 
the  ultimate  problems  of  geometry  and  astronomy. 
The  Euclid  of  the  schools  and  the  solar  system  of 
ordinary  text-books  remain  untouched.  Euclid  deals 
with  the  measurement  of  objects  on  this  globe,  by 
men.  The  Newton  of  academic  examinations 
explains  the  diurnal  and  annual  rotations  of  the 
planets  and  the  physics  of  our  solar  system.  Neither 
Euclid  nor  Newton  ever  laid  down  final,  absolute,  and 
ultimate  laws  of  the  universe.  If  anyone  supposed 
that  Newton  did  this,  Dr.  Einstein  tells  them  they 
were  premature,  and  that  Relativity  goes  a  long  way 
farther  than  they  dreamed.  Professor  Eddington, 
the  Astronomer-Royal,  and  some  of  our  highest 
authorities,  have  now  explained  the  Einstein  doctrine 


LAST  WORDS  167 

and  are  willing  to  accept  it,  though  it  is  still  waiting 
demonstration  by  final  tests.  But  to  assume  that 
this  is  to  knock  the  bottom  out  of  science  is  indeed 
childish  superstition. 


I  have  done  my  best  to  follow  Dr.  Einstein's  new 
book  and  the  various  expositions  it  has  called  forth. 
And  I  will  only  say  that  the  extension  therein  given 
to  the  doctrine  of  Relativity  causes  me  no  difficulty  to 
accept,  for  I  have  been  a  firm  believer  in  an  extreme 
form  of  Relativity  all  my  life.  Even  at  Oxford  I 
never  could  bring  my  mind  to  believe  in  any  Absolute 
Reality  outside  my  personal  consciousness,  however 
high  the  probability  that  our  scientific  knowledge  was 
correct  in  fact.  I  have  never  known  any  limit  to 
Relativity,  i.e.  to  the  truth  of  things  being  true,  so  jar 
only  as  human  powers  and  conditions  admit.  Accord- 
ingly, I  hail  Dr.  Einstein's  enlarged  Relativity  of 
Time  and  Space,  which  to  me  have  always  been  mere 
working  forms  of  the  human  understanding.  But 
when,  in  Part  III.,  pp.  105-114,  he  determines  the 
structure  of  Space  in  se,  and  denies  that  "  the  stellar 
universe  is  a  finite  island  in  the  infinite  ocean  of 
space,"  but  postulates  a  finite  universe,  he  is  going 
too  far.  Geometry  may  prove  this  in  a  fourth 
dimension,  i.e.  a  non-human  world.  But  a  geometer 
has  no  right  to  dogmatise  about  the  universe  by  what 
are  merely  X  Y  Z  theories  on  paper.  All  these  tables 
are  not  geometry,  i.e.  the  measuring  of  real  things, 
but  they  are  algebraic  conundrums,  which  may  have 


168  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

no  real  existence  outside  the  brain  of  the  calculator. 
Dr.  Einstein  is  more  geometrician  than  philosopher. 
Relative  philosophy  will  recall  him  to  earth  by  remind- 
ing him  that  it  is  an  unverified  assumption  that  his 
idea  of  Space  and  Time,  his  ratios,  and  his  figures  rule 
throughout  the  universe.  Dr.  Einstein's  new  Rela- 
tivity may  be  an  unanswerable  tour-de-force  in  super- 
geometry,  but  it  has  no  right  to  pose  as  Relative 
Philosophy.  There  may  be  not  only  a  fourth,  but  an 
nth  geometry  in  the  universe,  or  the  universe  may  be 
a  figment  of  his  own  imagination.  True  Relativity 
rejects  all  forms  of  the  Absolute. 


NOVEMBER 

-      1920      - 


XI 


THE  establishment  of  a  statesman  of  tried 
authority  in  the  French  Republic  is  a  happy 
omen  for  the  peace  of  Europe  and  for  the 
union  of  our  two  great  nations.  On  that  union  the 
future  of  civilisation  is  staked.  At  first  sight,  it 
might  be  thought  that  nothing  of  great  importance 
had  been  effected  by  the  transfer  of  M.  Millerand 
from  the  office  of  Prime  Minister  to  that  of  President 
of  the  Republic.  Those  who  know  France  have  seen 
that  the  change  is  of  deep  significance.  M.  Millerand 
does  not  accede  to  the  Elysee  as  a  courtly  figurehead 
and  judicious  Chairman  of  Cabinets,  but  as  the 
masterful  chief  of  a  great  people  who  receive  him  as 
their  guide  and  inspirer.  He  himself  declared  that 
he  would  accept  office  only  on  those  conditions.  He 
even  suggested  that  he  hoped  to  see  amendments  in 
the  Constitution.  But  the  Constitution  already  offers 
to  an  able  President  an  authority  greater  than  that 
of  a  British  Prime  Minister  and  greater  than  that  of 
a  President  of  the  United  States.  Our  Prime  Minis- 
ters, we  know,  can  be  dismissed  by  the  sudden  vote 
of  a  very  small  majority  of  a  single  Chamber,  and  at 

times  they  have  been  hampered  by  the  silent  influence 

169 


170  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

of  the  Crown.  The  American  President  (elected  for 
four  years  only)  can  be  absolutely  checkmated  by  a 
Congress  which  he  cannot  dissolve  and  a  Senate  which 
has  almost  equal  authority  in  foreign  affairs. 


M.  Millerand  is  now  irremovable  President  of 
France  for  seven  years.  His  position  is  quite  different 
from  what  it  was  when  he  was  Prime  Minister  and 
had  to  defend  his  every  act  with  opponents  in  the 
Chambers  and  could  be  overthrown  by  a  single  vote. 
He  has  himself  declared  that  he  claims  the  right  to 
conduct  negotiations  with  allies.  He  has  legal 
authority  to  do  much  which  Woodrow  Wilson 
attempted  to  do,  but  which  the  American  Constitu- 
tion proves  to  be  ultra  vires.  No  doubt  the  French 
President  can  be  held  up  by  the  entire  Parliament 
acting  together.  He  is  no  dictator,  but  a  constitu- 
tional Minister.  But  M.  Millerand  has  gifts  to  lead 
Parliament  which  no  President  since  Thiers  ever  has 
had.  He  has  a  much  longer  term  of  office  than  an 
American  President.  He  cannot  be  dismissed  in  a 
night  sitting  as  a  British  Prime  Minister  may  be. 
He  ascends  to  his  high  office  with  all  the  prestige  of  a 
great  Parliamentary  leader,  yet  he  has  no  authority 
above  him  to  represent  the  nation.  Like  an  Ameri- 
can President,  he  is  irremovable,  and  for  a  term  prac- 
tically double.  And  yet,  as  Chairman  of  a  real  Par- 
liamentary Cabinet,  he  can  take  active  and  con- 
tinuous part  in  Parliamentary  legislation  with  a  free- 
dom which  no  American  President  can  exert.  He  is 


LAST  WORDS  171 

the  first  French  President  since  Thiers  who  has  suc- 
ceeded to  that  office  with  an  immense  majority  in  the 
Chamber. 


The  opinion  of  those  who  know  France  best  long 
ago  convinced  me  that  a  strictly  Parliamentary 
Executive  on  the  British  lines  is  unworkable  in  that 
country,  and  that  a  Presidential  Executive — neither 
party  leader  nor  dictator — is  best  suited  to  the  genius 
and  traditions  of  the  Republic.  The  vast  mass  of 
rural  citizens,  at  last  disillusioned  of  an  Empire,  have 
always  been  opposed  to  the  faction-fights  in  the 
Chamber  at  Paris.  Their  ideal  is  stable  Republican 
Government.  Internecine  Parliamentary  cabals  have 
ever  been  the  grave  of  French  statesmen.  Socially 
speaking,  and  for  maintenance  of  the  institutions  of 
order  and  of  property,  the  French  people  are  more 
settled — more  conservative — than  either  the  British 
or  the  American  people.  There  is  in  France  a  more 
steady  horror  of  ochlocracy  and  communism  than  in 
any  Anglo-Saxon  race.  The  recent  Socialist  Con- 
gress at  Orleans  showed  how  organised  Labour  in 
France,  constituted  as  it  is  on  Socialist  lines,  by  a 
crushing  majority  repudiated  the  Bolshevist  Com- 
munism and  its  tyranny ;  whilst  neither  British  nor 
American  Socialism,  much  less  German  and  Italian 
Socialism,  have  taken  any  such  emphatic  step.  The 
social  system  of  France — still  mainly  a  self-support- 
ing and  industrial  peasantry — is  more  stable  than  the 
social  system  of  Britain  and  America — where  gigan- 


172  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

tic  industrial  enlargement  fills  the  mind  of  capitalist 

and    workmen    with    perpetual    visions    of    a    new 
world. 


A  real  statesman  in  the  position  of  an  irremovable 
President,  who  is  also  the  effective  chief  of  his  own 
Cabinet,  through  whom  he  is  in  daily  touch  with 
Parliament,  is  far  more  able  to  effect  his  own  policy, 
if  he  keeps  it  resolutely  in  his  mind,  than  is  an  Ameri- 
can President  or  a  British  Prime  Minister.  Our 
Minister  has  to  be  continually  hedging  and  compro- 
mising and  altering  his  plans  as  the  House  seems  to 
sway  backwards  and  forwards ;  and  often  he  is  forced 
to  show  the  whole  of  his  hand  prematurely,  or  meet 
rude  and  stormy  insults.  An  American  President  is 
not  in  regular  touch  with  Congress,  and  what  he  calls 
his  Cabinet  is  not  a  true  Parliamentary  Cabinet  in  our 
sense.  A  French  President  is,  or  rather  may  be,  in 
a  position  which  shares  some  of  the  advantages  of  a 
British  Prime  Minister  in  that  he  is  never  at  arms' 
length  with  Parliament,  and  also  he  has  the  great 
strength  of  the  American  President  in  that  he  is  irre- 
movable by  direct  vote.  Now  M.  Millerand  has  all 
the  opportunities  of  using  both  advantages — and  I 
confidently  look  for  a  new  and  stable  Government  in 
France  more  conservative  in  spirit  and  more  effective 
in  international  peace. 


LAST  WORDS  178 

M.  Millerand  and  Mr.  Lloyd  George  have  worked 
together  with  rare  comradeship,  and  we  trust  that 
this  common  entente  may  continue  and  increase. 
But  the  difficulties  to  be  overcome  are  deep  seated. 
Union  between  England  and  France  forms  the  very 
condition  of  the  welfare  of  both.  But  there  are  in- 
herent differences  in  our  interests  and  mental  habits. 
France  in  her  heroic  struggle  has  been  all  but  bled  to 
death.  Her  chief  industrial  district  has  been  ruined 
for  a  generation.  Her  deadly  enemy  has  even  still 
larger  material  resources  and  a  population  almost 
double ;  and  there  are  no  strategic  barriers  between 
them.  France  adopted  the  Wilson  programme 
enthusiastically  whilst  it  seemed  to  mean  a  powerful 
protector  and,  in  the  extinct  triple  Treaty,  a  per- 
fectly efficient  safeguard.  But  she  never  had  any 
illusions  about  a  world-peace  and  an  omnipotent 
League  to  restore  civilisation,  such  as  was  the  honest 
dream  of  the  English  people  and  Government. 
France  was  far  too  miserable  about  her  wounds  and 
her  defenceless  state  to  indulge  in  visions  about 
general  civilisation.  When  Wilson  withdrew,  and 
took  with  him  the  abortive  triple  guarantee,  France 
could  see  nothing  but  her  own  almost  desperate  isola- 
tion— the  need  of  indemnities  and  new  provinces. 
How  wras  she  to  get  money,  coal,  Eastern  allies,  and 
security  in  the  Mediterranean?  Her  one  hope  was — 
gold,  Poland,  Asia  Minor,  Syria,  restored  mines, 
manufactures,  allies,  and  more  coloured  troops.  All 
else  might  go  to  ruin  its  own  way.  All  that  was  very 
natural  in  a  people  faced  with  the  imminent  peril  of 


174  NOVISSIMA  VERSA 

their  beloved  France.    But  it  was  not  the  British  way, 
and  not  the  way  to  European  peace. 


Frenchmen  have  two  qualities  in  rare  perfection — 
a  logical  perspicacity  to  follow  out  reasoning  to  its  full 
consequences,  together  with  an  incurable  tendency  to 
suspect  motives  and  aims  of  friends  and  foes.  Now  the 
English  mind  is  much  slower  to  detect  danger,  deser- 
tion, or  treachery ;  and  is  averse  to  pressing  every 
point  to  its  logical  sequence.  The  Frenchman  takes 
up  his  data  and  follows  them  up  to  the  end  coute  que 
cotite.  Now  the  English  mind,  when  it  finds  reason- 
ing come  to  startling  results,  begins  to  hark  back  and 
think  there  was  something  doubtful  in  the  data  from 
which  he  started.  He  says  things  have  altered,  what 
was  true  at  first  is  no  longer  true.  He  begins  again 
from  fresh  premissa — he  is  an  opportunist  by  habit 
and  from  experience.  The  Frenchman  turns  round 
and  accuses  him  of  treachery,  of  vacillation  and  ill-will 
— perfide  Albion!  This  accounts  for  many  things  in 
recent  disputes.  French  and  English  Ministers 
agreed  with  Wilson's  schemes  to  re-settle  Europe,  to 
make  Germany  pay,  and  to  put  her  in  chains.  Eng- 
lishmen, in  a  year  or  two,  began  to  see  that  Germany 
could  not  pay  all — and  that  to  put  her  in  chains  was 
to  make  it  impossible  that  she  could  pay  at  all.  They 
began  to  see  that  Poland  was  a  very  poor  substitute 
to  France  for  Tsardom  Russia,  and  that  Soviet  Russia 
would  not  and  could  not  pay  the  Tsardom  debts. 
They  saw  that  France  could  not  hold  Cilicia  and  had 


LAST  WORDS  175 

no  real  hold  on  Syria.  Frenchmen  heard  all  this  with 
rage  and  suspicion.  What !  Germany  is  not  to  pay, 
nor  Russia  !  Poland  no  good  !  Syria  a  failure  ! 
What  is  to  become  of  France  then? 


England  and  France  must  hold  together — or  both 
will  fall.  But  the  difficulties  of  joint  action  are  great. 
Our  nation  is,  above  all  things,  practical — ready  to 
see  that  conditions  are  changed,  that  new  plans  must 
be  formed.  And  our  Governments  are  more  com- 
pletely and  continuously  under  the  direction  of  Parlia- 
ment and  of  opinion  than  is  usually  the  Government 
of  France.  But  the  French  people  and  their  rulers, 
with  the  passionate  will  of  their  race  and  their  exact 
and  scientific  mind,  vehemently  insist  on  literal  execu- 
tion of  every  agreement  and  precise  adherence  to 
every  clause  of  a  common  policy.  To  differ  from 
their  view  is  to  desert  them — to  see  new  conditions 
is  to  side  with  their  enemy.  All  this  makes  co-opera- 
tion extraordinarily  difficult.  It  is  impossible  for  us 
to  join  in  all  the  schemes  on  which  France  has  set  her 
heart — and  yet  we  cannot  actively  oppose  them.  We 
will,  and  we  must,  press  Germany  to  make  good  her 
reparation  in  all  reasonable  measure ;  but  we  cannot 
join  France  in  fresh  military  invasion  of  German  land. 
We  know  how  futile  are  hopes  of  any  Russian 
Government  recognising  outstanding  liabilities — how 
vain  is  the  refusal  to  trade  until  this  is  done.  We 
know  how  precarious  is  the  hold  of  any  Christian 
Power  on  any  Asiatic  littoral.  And  we  know  how 


176  NOVISSIMA  VERSA 

precarious  and  how  intractable  is  the  new-born  Polish 
nation.  Yet  we  cannot  formally  resist  the  French 
entetement  for  these  schemes.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
we  are  powerless  to  take  any  adequate  part  in  any  of 
them.  With  Constantinople,  Palestine,  Meso- 
potamia, India,  Ireland,  all  in  military  occupation, 
we  have  not  a  man  to  spare.  Finally,  the  democracy 
at  home  places  an  absolute  bar  on  any  fresh  commit- 
ments of  a  warlike  kind.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  loudly 
calling  out  for  a  great  reduction  of  those  we  have. 


The  result  is  that  everything  connected  with  the 
Covenant  must  be  counted  at  present  as  secondary, 
and  our  first  and  urgent  care  must  be  the  home 
interest  of  the  United  Kingdom — and,  indeed,  of  the 
entire  Realm  overseas.  Circumstances  now  force  us 
to  take  up  much  the  same  position  as  that  of  the 
American  people.  They  cry — as  practically  did  both 
Conventions — America  first !  France  too  cries — 
France  first !  rather,  indeed,  La  France  quand  memel 
That  is  a  cry  which  we  cannot  share,  but  which  we 
cannot  defy.  It  will  require  infinite  diplomatic 
adroitness  to  avoid  being  entangled  in  desperate 
adventures  which  our  reason  opposes  and  our  people 
condemn,  and  yet  to  avoid  the  charge  of  deserting 
our  ally.  One  wray  of  cementing  alliance  would  be  to 
reduce  at  least  by  one-half — even  by  two-thirds — the 
monstrous  profit  we  make  by  the  price  of  indispens- 
able coal  to  our  friends.  Sorely  as  we  need  the  gain, 
our  financial  position  is  greatly  better  than  that  of 


LAST  WORDS  177 

Italy  or  France.  For  my  part,  I  would  practically 
sell  coal  at  cost  price,  and,  indeed,  I  would  cancel  the 
sums  advanced  on  loan.  A  second  way  of  clearing  up 
all  grounds  of  estrangement  would  be  frank  and  com- 
plete publicity  for  all  facts  and  intentions.  We  have 
suffered  all  through  the  war  by  secret  policy  and  by 
withholding  adequate  explanation  of  our  own  case. 
France,  Italy,  America  have  never  had  true  under- 
standing of  what  is  our  actual  condition  and  what  are 
our  real  aims.  There  is  a  conventional  bar  on  a 
British  Government  defending  itself  until  it  is 
formally  attacked  in  Parliament.  The  "  English 
gentleman's"  pride  is  to  treat  all  abuse  with  con- 
temptuous silence.  And  yet  we  now  know  the  incal- 
culable power  of  active  and  skilful  propaganda.  It  is 
time  for  a  British  Government  to  force  upon  all  the 
real  facts  and  its  own  determined  policy. 


The  burning  problem  of  Nationalisation  has  been 
ably  treated  by  a  great  succession  of  the  leading 
statesmen,  economists,  capitalists,  Socialists,  and 
workers,  from  almost  every  point  of  view  and  with  a 
variety  of  different  experiences ;  and  it  has  been  my 
business  to  study  them,  whether  supporting  or 
opposed  to  the  scheme.  But  of  all  that  I  have  seen 
none  seem  to  me  so  convincing  as  the  essay  of  Lord 
Emmott.1  In  some  78  massive  pages  Lord  Emmott 

»  Nationalisation  of  Industries.— A.  criticism,  by  Lord  Emmott. 
T.  Fisher  Unwin,  Limited,  2s. 


12 


178  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

has  examined  the  entire  case  for  nationalising  indus- 
tries ;  generally,  or  in  mines,  railways,  transport,  and 
land.  It  is  done  with  rare  lucidity  and  judicial  impar- 
tiality, shirking  no  aspect  of  the  problem,  and 
examining  each  scheme  in  detail.  He  combines  in 
himself  many  qualifications  for  wise  judgment — a 
trained  economist,  an  experienced  statesman,  an 
eminent  financial  authority,  an  old  official  in  both 
Houses,  a  great  industrial  chief,  and  an  ardent 
Liberal.  As  might  be  expected  of  a  public  man  of 
such  wide  range  of  interests,  the  whole  essay  is  com- 
posed \vith  scrupulous  moderation,  entire  fairness, 
and  the  weight  of  judicial  decision. 


Lord  Emmott  begins  with  a  thorough  and  truly 
Liberal  examination  of  the  causes  of  Industrial  Un- 
rest. He  shows  that  nationalisation  of  all  industry  is 
mere  tyranny — as  the  Bolshevist  experiment  proves 
— because  universal  and  real  Communism,  being  in 
incessant  conflict  with  the  acquisitive  instincts  of 
human  nature,  can  only  be  maintained  by  ruthless 
universal  coercion.  This  English  and  French 
Socialist  leaders  have  at  last  come  to  see.  Lord 
Emmott  then  passes  on  to  examine  the  organisation 
of  nationalisation,  as  proposed  in  various  schemes. 
He  proves  that  the  virus  of  coercion  must  rule  in  any 
type  of  nationalisation,  and  that  any  form  of  coercion 
of  any  industry  necessarily  implies  bureaucracy.  It  is 
futile  for  Labour  leaders  to  repudiate  bureaucracy  in 
words  if  they  ask  for  the  national  organisation,  which, 


LAST  WORDS  179 

whatever  it  be  called,  is  nothing  but  a  monstrous, 
disciplined,  hard-and-fast  official  staff.  He  goes  on 
to  show  how  this  staff  grows  and  hardens,  and  how  it 
reacts  on  politics,  and  how  industrial  nationalisation 
will  demoralise  government,  leading  to  a  system 
wherein  Parliament  and  Ministries  become  the  resorts 
of  those  who  promise  most  to  their  electors.  In  an 
ultra-democratic  Constitution  the  ultimate  effect  of 
nationalisation  is  to  place  the  pay,  the  hours,  the  con- 
ditions, of  each  industry  in  the  hands  of  the  workers 
themselves.  No  Minister  of  nationalised  industry 
could  refuse  the  demands  of  the  workmen  acting 
directly  on  the  M.P.'s  they  elect. 


One  of  our  burning  questions  is  Bureaucracy ;  for 
the  advancing  armies  of  Socialism  wave  banners 
which,  whatever  may  be  their  professions,  necessarily 
involve  a  multiple  system  of  bureaucracy ;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  all  who  hold  by  our  social  order  repudiate 
the  extension  of  bureaucracy  camouflaged  under 
another  name.  And  now  we  have  a  very  timely  book 
about  the  eminent  civil  servants  of  our  age  by  one  of 
the  most  eminent  of  them  all.  Sir  Algernon  West's 
Contemporary  Portraits1  is  at  once  a  memoir  of  the 
Civil  Service  of  the  Victorian  era  and  a  book  of  per- 
sonal impressions  and  delightful  anecdotes.  For 

i  Contemporary  Portraits:  Men  of  My  Day  in  Public  Life,  by  the 
Right  Honourable  Sir  Algernon  West,  G.C.B.,  with  twenty-four 
illustrations,  8vo.,  Fisher  Unwin,  Ltd. 


180  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

some  forty  years  Sir  Algernon  has  ably  served  his 
country,  has  been  at  the  very  centre  of  the  official 
world  under  all  administrations,  and,  as  a  member  of 
many  commissions,  councils,  and  clubs,  has  known 
everyone  and  has  heard  of  everything  going.  The 
result  is  a  vivid  picture  of  that  vast  and  silent  staff  of 
officials  who  in  practice  work  the  British  Empire,  but 
who  are  so  little  known  to  the  ordinary  public — 
ignotique  longa  Nocte,  carent  quia  vate  sacro.  One 
of  the  oldest  of  their  comrades  has  now  come  forward 
"to  sing  the  praises  of  good  men"  by  a  faithful 
record  of  what  he  has  seen,  not,  as  Isaac  Walton  puts 
it,  "by  vague  reports  and  barren  eulogies,"  but  by 
pictures  of  the  men  as  they  lived  and  worked. 

*#**** 

And  these  men  did  work.  It  is  a  story  of  indomit- 
able energy,  conscientious  sacrifice  to  duty,  patience, 
tact,  and  fairness,  of  which  we  may  be  proud.  No 
Civil  Service  in  the  world — none,  perhaps,  in  history 
— can  show  a  better  series  of  able  men  serving  their 
country  without  any  adequate  reward  and  without 
recognition  except  from  the  statesmen  and  the 
sovereigns  whose  business  they  carried  on.  I  can 
myself  bear  witness  to  the  truth  of  these  portraits. 
Though  I  have  no  pretension  to  be  a  civil  servant,  yet, 
as  I  have  served  on  two  Royal  Commissions  and 
sundry  official  Committees,  and  on  the  London 
County  Council,  and  have  been  a  member  of  many 
clubs  and  societies,  I  have  known  most  of  the  persons 


LAST  WORDS  181 

described  and  have  been  the  friend  of  many  of  them. 
As  I  am  a  year  older  than  Sir  Algernon,  my  memory 
goes  as  far  back,  and,  I  think,  is  as  sure  as  his,  and  I 
can  certify  to  the  accuracy  of  his  portraits.  All  that 
he  tells  us  of  Lords  Farrer  and  Lingen,  of  Sir 
Spencer  Walpole,  Sir  Louis  Mallet,  Lord  Welby,  of 
Trollope,  Arnold,  Mowatt,  Lushington,  and  Digby, 
bring  back  to  me  the  men  as  I  knew  them,  and  have 
often  served  or  debated  in  their  company.  I  wish 
that  Sir  Algernon  had  written  more  of  Sir  Henry 
Maine,  of  Lord  Hobhouse,  of  Herman  Merivale,  of 
Bertram  Mitford,  and  of  Lord  Thring,  each  of  whom 
had  special  gifts  and  individual  tasks  of  their  own. 


Let  it  not  be  supposed  that  this  book  about  civil 
servants  is  a  dull  summary  of  official  minutes.     It  is 
full   of  good   things,    of  humorous   anecdotes,    and 
witticisms   that   do  not   often   pass   outside   certain 
coteries  and  clubs.    The  old  Dickens'  Circumlocution 
clerks,  we  hear,  were  like  the  fountains  "which  play 
all  day  from  10  to  4."       Alfred  Montgomery,  the 
last  of  the  old  dandies,  rebuked  a  clerk  in  his  shirt- 
sleeves by   suggesting  that   he   might   take  off  his 
trousers ;  Lord  Hammond's  hall-porter  excused  his 
chief's  absence  :  "  for  he  had  gone  to  a  funeral — the 
only  day's  pleasuring  he  has  had  for  four  years." 
Matthew  Arnold  in  his  early  economic  days  took  "  a 
blow-out "    in   Paris,    and   then   mistook    Frederick 
Leveson-Gower  for  his  own  chief,  Lord  Granville. 


182  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

The  Treasury  complained  that  he  did  not  stop  at 
Edmonton  :  "  How  could  I,"  said  the  Inspector, 
"when  John  Gilpin  couldn't?"  But  the  story  that 
Arnold  didn't  know  common  plants  and  trees  is  quite 
ridiculous.  He  loved  and  knew  Nature  as  well  as 
Wordsworth  or  Tennyson.  Gilbert's  coat  of  arms 
and  motto  for  Sir  Blundell  Maple  was — Coeur-de-lion 
in  prison,  Blondel  m'appelle.  The  history  of  No.  10 
Downing  Street  is  extremely  interesting.  The 
twenty-four  illustrations  are  wonderfully  life-like, 
especially  those  of  Sir  Algernon,  of  Mallet,  Arnold, 
Farrer,  Walpole,  Trollope,  Rowton,  Welby,  and 
Mo  watt.  The  book  altogether  is  one  that  fills  a  gap 
in  the  biographies  of  our  time,  and  it  ought  to  fill  a 
gap  in  the  shelves  of  any  collection  that  calls  itself  a 
library. 


The  first — the  urgent — task  of  this  Session  must  be 
to  take  in  hand  the  appalling  condition  of  Ireland. 
It  threatens  the  very  existence  of  the  United  King- 
dom, of  the  Empire,  of  the  Throne,  of  civilisation. 
For  the  moment,  Ireland  is  practically  a  separate  Re- 
public, under  military  occupation  and  sporadic  civil 
war.  If  this  were  to  last,  what  becomes  of  our 
monarchic  Constitution,  of  our  Imperial  position  in 
the  world  ?  I  say  that  this  is  the  worst  crisis  that  has 
befallen  Britain  for  centuries.  In  these  pages  I  have 
foreborne  to  meddle  with  the  Irish  dilemma,  so 
tangled,  so  obscure,  so  inexplicable  are  the  facts ;  and 
my  own  forecast  of  the  future  seemed  so  hopeless  that 


LAST  WORDS  183 

it  might  appear  unpatriotic  to  state  it.  But  now  that 
my  ' '  Last  Words  ' ' — perhaps  my  last  days — are  soon 
to  close,  I  cannot  but  say  that  our  country  never  was 
in  more  imminent  peril. 


There  is  a  general  cry  for  a  frank  understanding 
between  the  British  and  the  Irish  peoples ;  and  it  is 
certain  that  now  the  people  of  Britain  desire  to  accept 
whatever  the  Irish  people  claim,  short  of  inflicting  a 
deadly  wound  upon  our  own  island.  But  how  are  we 
to  get  into  touch  with  the  Irish  people,  if  the  loudest 
voices  in  its  name  repudiate  all  dealings  with  the 
united  nation's  Government  and  Parliament?  Who 
are  the  true  representatives  of  Ireland?  Where  are 
they  ?  What  do  they  claim  ?  This  nation  cannot  deal 
with  secret  murder  clubs  nor  with  demagogues  in 
America  and  overseas.  For  one  nation  to  treat  with 
another  nation,  both  must  have  authorised  persons  to 
represent  them  and  to  bind  their  own  nation  by  their 
contracts.  Where  are  the  Irish  representatives,  and 
who  can  show  that  they  have  power  to  pledge  the 
Irish  people?  The  actual  Government  of  Soviet 
Russia  are  known  persons,  having  visible  power  to 
make  good  their  agreements  if  they  choose  to  do  so. 
But  where  are  those  who  can  pretend  to  speak  for 
Ireland,  to  bind  Ireland  by  any  treaty  they  might 
sign? 


I  study  the  various  proposals  of  our  Elder  States- 


184  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

men ;  and  with  all  the  spirit  of  goodwill  and  of  peace 
they  breathe,  I  fail  to  see  how  their  schemes  would 
work  out.  These  wild,  ill-disciplined,  and  barbarous 
reprisals  must  be  sternly  repressed.  But  what  then, 
if  civilians,  officials,  police,  soldiers,  continue  to  be 
murdered  by  secret  assassins?  If  the  Irish  people 
claim  to  be  at  war,  why  continue  the  farce  of  civil  law, 
juries,  pensions,  subsidies,  and  the  whole  pretence  of 
carrying  on  civil  government?  If  military  occupa- 
tion be  necessary,  it  should  be  such  as  we  honourably 
carry  on  now  on  the  Rhine  in  the  enemies'  country. 
If  all  military  occupation  is  monstrous,  and,  as 
Labour  insists,  all  soldiers  are  to  be  withdrawn,  who 
can  guarantee  but  that  parts  of  Ireland  will  follow  the 
example  of  so  many  provinces  of  Russia,  and  break 
out  in  general  chaos,  plunder,  and  appropriation? 
And  of  all  military  manoeuvres,  the  gradual  with- 
drawal from  an  enemy  country  is  the  most  difficult, 
as  the  German  Army  found  in  November,  1918.  If 
Ireland  were  to  have  a  separate  army  and  absolute 
control  of  all  ports  and  shipping,  the  maintenance  of 
British  trade  and  commerce,  and  the  very  safety  of 
this  country,  would  be  at  the  mercy  of  enemy 
factions. 


The  essential  question  is  :  How  can  the  British 
people  be  brought  into  free  speech  with  the  Irish 
people?  The  Home  Rule  Bill,  even  amended  and 
enlarged,  will  not  do  that.  What  will?  I  do  not 
pretend  to  say  what  would.  But  it  happens  that  a 


LAST  WORDS  185 

scheme  of  this  kind,  obviously  "heroic,"  was  shown 
to  me,  was  submitted  to  Government  then  engaged 
in  drafting  the  Bill.  It  was  proposed  by  an  English- 
man, a  resident  landowner  in  the  disturbed  West  of 
Ireland.  His  idea  was  this.  Let  freely-chosen  dele- 
gates from  Ireland  meet  an  equal  body  of  delegates 
from  Britain,  and  try  to  frame  a  treaty  of  peace,  as 
if  they  were  sent  by  two  nations  that  had  been  carry- 
ing on  a  desultory  war.  The  Irish  delegates  were  not 
to  be  nominated  by  the  British  Government,  nor  was 
any  condition  to  be  imposed  on  them  by  the  British 
Parliament.  They  were  to  be  free  representatives  of 
the  Irish  people,  to  treat  in  their  name. 

Such  was  the  "heroic"  scheme  of  an  English 
gentleman  living  on  his  property  in  Ireland  and  in 
close  touch  with  the  farm  people  around  him.  But 
how  were  free  delegates  from  Ireland  to  be  found? 
What  would  be  their  authority  if  they  were  found? 
If  that  were  the  only  difficulty,  it  could  be  got  over 
at  once.  There  are  at  present  105  duly  elected 
M.P.'s  from  Ireland,  of  whom,  unfortunately,  we 
only  see  at  Westminster  a  very  small  contingent. 
Suppose  that  the  whole  of  these  Irish  M.P.'s  chose 
in  Dublin,  say,  five  (or  seven)  delegates,  and  that  the 
British  House  of  Commons  in  Westminster  chose  an 
equal  number.  Let  the  chosen  meet  in  friendly 
interviews  in  an  independent  spot — say  the  Isle  of 
Man — with  an  independent  chairman — say  from  an 
Overseas  Dominion,  such  as  General  Smuts.  It  is  no 
doubt  a  highly  unconstitutional  vision,  though 
scarcely  more  wild  than  that  of  some  current  schemes. 


186  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

But,  at  any  rate,  it  might  give  an  intelligible  answer 
to  the  question  :  What  do  the  Irish  people  claim 
which  the  British  people  can  accept  ? 


DECEMBER 

-      1920      - 


XII 


OF  all  the  problems  produced  by  the  World  War 
and  the  chaos  it  left,  none  is  more  urgent  than 
the  reorganisation  of  the  United  Kingdom 
and  the  Dominions  of  the  Crown.  Our  antique, 
unique,  abnormal  Constitution  is  obviously  unfit  for 
its  new  task.  The  great  overseas  Commonwealths  are 
loudly  calling  for  admission  to  the  government  of  the 
Empire.  What  a  change  it  is  since  a  hundred  years 
ago  they  were  the  "Colonies"!  India,  once  the 
possession  of  a  trading  company,  is  receiving  a 
Liberal  Constitution,  and  grumbles  fiercely  that  it  is 
"  not  good  enough."  Ireland  declares  itself  to  be  an 
independent  Republic,  and  in  parts  it  is  so  in  fact. 
"  Home  Rule  all  round  "  is  the  universal  cry,  the  in- 
evitable demand  of  the  vast  populations  who  in  war 
have  proved  their  force  and  their  ambitions — people 
who  are  to  Britain  what  the  Roman  world  was  to 
Rome  when  Julius  Caesar  admitted  them  to  power 
as  the  equals  of  Old  Rome. 


The  Empires  are  passing  away  !    And,  not  only  are 

they  becoming  Republics,  but  they  are  disintegrating 

187 


188  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

into  ethnic,  internecine  Republics.  Germany, 
Austria,  Russia,  Turkey,  China,  have  thrown  off 
Emperors,  and  with  the  Balkan  and  the  Baltic  races 
are  setting  up  a  network  of  national  governments. 
The  Covenant  and  the  solvent  cry  of  Self-determina- 
tion have  whirled  round  the  world  and  have  started 
ferments  more  potent  than  any  of  Rousseau,  Luther, 
or  Peter  the  Hermit.  Nowhere  have  they  found  a 
soil  so  well  prepared  as  in  the  so-called  British 
Empire,  which  is  made  up  of  thirty  or  forty  separate 
nations,  distinct  in  language,  religion,  laws,  and 
habits.  It  is  high  time  that  the  relations  of  these 
forty  nations  to  Parliament  and  our  anomalous  Con- 
stitution were  revised  with  a  view  to  real  facts. 
France,  the  United  States,  Switzerland,  Portugal, 
were  Republics  with  no  Emperors,  no  subject 
nationalities  of  any  importance.  The  enormous  ex- 
tent and  infinite  diversity  of  those  wre  govern  makes 
the  task  almost  insoluble,  and  it  is  monstrous  to  leave 
them  in  the  hands  of  that  effete  institution — the  Par- 
liament at  Westminster. 


I  honour  and  respect  our  statesmen  whose  honesty, 
public  spirit,  self-control,  and  good  sense  are  un- 
equalled in  any  age;  but  they  are  at  the  mercy  of 
adventurers  and  nonentities.  The  practice  and  tone 
of  Parliament  were  formed  when  it  consisted  of  a 
single  class — a  governing  class,  of  wealth,  high  breed- 
ing, a  common  education,  and  loyalty  to  the  Crown 
and  Constitution.  Ministers  continue  these  anti- 


LAST  WORDS  189 

quated  civilities  in  face  of  a  noisy  opposition  which  is 
often  like  a  park  meeting  of  rebels  and  traitors.  Pitt, 
Canning,  Peel,  Gladstone,  Disraeli,  thought  they  had 
done  enough  when  they  had  convinced  "  honourable 
gentlemen  "  of  their  policy  and  intentions.  Ministers 
still  keep  up  the  old  etiquette,  though  "  the  people  " 
neither  know  nor  care  for  what  they  say,  and  despise 
the  Parliamentary  babble  as  a  mere  blind,  except  that 
some  treasonable  "question,"  or  some  mendacious 
insult  is  "  reported  "  far  and  wide  by  the  gutter  Press. 
Ministers  are  satisfied  if  they  can  assure  "  their 
honourable  friend  ' '  that  ' '  the  rumours  are  incor- 
rect." What  they  should  do  is  to  speak  to  the  People 
in  language  that  the  People  understand. 


It  is  recognised  now  that  Parliament  in  its  present 
form  is  an  effete  institution,  because  it  obstinately 
clings  to  forms  and  functions  which  were  devised  when 
all  the  conditions  were  different.  A  century  or  two 
ago  it  was  the  Legislature  of  a  moderate  kingdom 
ruled  by  a  patriotic  **  governing  class."  Now  it  is  the 
Executive  public  meeting  pretending  to  rule  over  an 
unwieldy  agglomeration  of  nationalities  permeated 
with  unrest,  sedition,  and  revolution.  The  House  of 
Commons  is  three  times  too  numerous  :  it  is  choked 
with  its  antique  rules,  forms,  and  conventions ;  it  has 
one  hundred  times  too  much  to  do,  with  impossible 
tasks  over  which  it  mumbles  and  blunders  in  idle  talk. 
A  rational  executive  body  should  not  contain  more 
than  a  dozen  members ;  a  rational  legislative  body 


190  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

should  not  contain  more  than  300  members. 
If  either  such  body  sat  for  more  than  three 
or  four  hours,  it  would  degenerate  into  a  club, 
open  to  gossip,  amusements,  and  casual  attend- 
ance. The  Sessions  are  still  arranged  as  they  were 
when  fox-hunting  squires  cheered  Mr.  Walpole  and 
"good  society"  trusted  Mr.  Pitt.  The  parapher- 
nalia of  first  and  second  readings,  Committee  stage, 
and  report  stage  were  invented  when  the  House  con- 
sisted, not  only  of  honourable  gentlemen,  but  of  good 
citizens  who  knew  "that  the  King's  Government 
must  be  carried  on,"  and  before  obstruction  had  been 
perfected  into  a  fine  art.  So,  too,  Questions,  once 
an  honest  inquiry  about  two  or  three  points  of  import- 
ance, have  swollen  into  the  hundreds  of  bogus  insinua- 
tions, in  which  Ministers  display  their  power  of  equi- 
vocation and  rebels  can  trumpet  their  treasonable 
calumnies — the  only  things  the  People's  journals  re- 
port in  conspicuous  headlines. 

*          *          #  *          *          * 

All  these  evils  have  grown  worse  under  every 
Government,  and  never  were  so  mischievous  as  in  this 
time  of  chaos  and  our  urgent  tasks  of  reconstruction. 
Some  years  ago,  in  essays  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,1 
I  tried  to  describe  them  and  their  remedies.  It  was 
proposed  to  reduce  the  number  of  members,  to  have 
short  sittings,  regular  Sessions  at  reasonable  intervals, 

1  House  of  Commons,  i.  and  it.     Nineteenth  Century,  vols.  x.  and 
xi.,  Sept.,  1881,  Jan.,  1882. 


LAST  WORDS  191 

limitation  of  Questions,  of  "Readings,"  time-limit 
of  speeches  as  worked  so  well  in  the  London  County 
Council — above  all,  reference  of  Bills,  not  of  Com- 
mittees of  the  whole  House,  but,  on  the  admirable 
French  plan,  to  special  Committees  of  about  eleven, 
chosen  by  proportional  systems  from  the  House,  each 
charged  with  departmental  subjects — Foreign  Affairs, 
Finance,  Army,  Navy,  Law,  Home,  India, 
Dominions,  and  so  on,  with  power  to  summon  Minis- 
ters, regularly  examine  them  and  their  documents,  if 
need  be  in  private,  and  report  to  the  whole  House. 
These  essays  were  submitted  to  Mr.  Gladstone,  not 
by  me,  and,  I  need  not  say,  were  utterly  condemned 
by  him  as  if  I  had  put  a  rash  hand  on  the  Ark  of  the 
Covenant.  In  all  matters  of  Parliamentary  practice 
Mr.  Gladstone  was  a  rank  Conservative — I  trust  he 
was  the  last.  A  time-limit  to  speeches,  he  thought, 
would  be  as  horrible  as  to  return  to  judicial  torture. 


All  this  no  doubt  involves  an  entire  reconstruction 
of  our  Parliamentary  system,  and  even  a  revision  of 
the  Constitution.  It  is  to  that  I  am  coming. 
Already  by  law,  if  not  yet  in  practice,  one  of  the  three 
kingdoms  has  a  Parliament  of  its  own — indeed,  two 
Parliaments.  This  has  broken  up  the  Parliamentary 
system,  and  makes  it  inevitable  that  Scotland,  Wales, 
and  England  should  have  national  assemblies  of  their 
own.  Some  people  think  that  England  may  be 
divided  into  North  and  South,  or  East  and  West — if 
not  the  vast  metropolitan  area  as  a  further  unit. 


192  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

Then  comes  the  problem  of  unifying  these  national 
bodies,  as  well  as  the  claim  of  the  Dominions  and  of 
India  to  enter  the  Imperial  Council.  It  is  a  complex 
and  tremendous  problem,  but  it  is  inevitable  and 
urgent.  The  new  Irish  Bill,  and  the  claims  of  the 
Overseas  Commonwealths,  force  it  upon  us.  This  is 
not  the  place  to  discuss  it,  and  I  do  not  presume  even 
to  offer  any  scheme  of  the  kind ;  but  it  must  be  faced 
— and  at  once.  Furthermore,  it  involves  the  re- 
organisation of  our  whole  system  of  Imperial  Govern- 
ment, and,  indeed,  of  our  venerable  British  Constitu- 
tion itself.  Nearly  every  State  in  Europe  has  revised 
its  Constitution  in  recent  years. 


There  is  nothing  sacred,  eternal,  monumental, 
about  our  Constitution — which  has  the  unique  quality 
of  being  neither  written  nor  rigid,  nor  inflexible,  nor 
protected  against  change  and  development  as  is  the 
case  in  France  and  the  United  States.  The  singular 
thing,  as  de  Tocqueville  said,  is  that  there  is  "no 
British  Constitution."  It  is  composed  of  ancient 
Acts  of  Parliament,  amending  Acts,  explanatory 
Acts,  various  traditions,  customs,  immemorial  prac- 
tices, judicial  decisions,  and  Parliamentary  resolu- 
tions. This  composite  mass  of  laws,  rules,  judg- 
ments, customs,  and  traditions  has  never  been  pub- 
lished with  any  official  authority ;  but,  what  is  still 
more  remarkable,  it  can  be  completely  altered  and 
replaced  by  a  single  Act  of  Parliament.  There  is 
nothing  treasonable  or  even  irregular  in  proposing  a 


LAST  WORDS  193 

drastic  revision  of  the  Constitution.  A  drastic  re- 
vision has  even  begun.  As  the  Irish  Bill  has  broken 
into  our  Parliamentary  system,  which  the  cry  of 
Home  Rule  all  round  radically  breaks  up,  so  the 
imminence  of  a  sort  of  Irish  Republic  challenges  the 
very  tenure  of  the  Crown.  If  this  were  to  be  con- 
tinued in  any  form,  our  coins,  proclamations,  proto- 
cols and  banknotes  would  have  to  be  varied.  "  The 
United  Kingdom,"  Britt.  Omn.  Rex,  would  become 
as  obsolete  as  Franc.  Rex. 


I  am  far  from  regretting  that  we  have  no  written 
and  rigid  Law  of  the  Constitution.  The  fact  that  it 
can  at  any  time  be  amended  by  Act  of  Parliament  has 
great  advantages,  at  least  for  a  nation  that  once  was 
'  Left  Centre,"  and  it  suits  our  practical,  compro- 
mising, and  illogical  turn  of  mind.  But  now,  the 
Constitution  is  actually  being  changed  in  the  regular 
way,  and  far  greater  changes  are  urgent  and  inevit- 
able. It  might  be  well,  then,  to  consolidate  the  mass 
of  Constitutional  rules  which  suit  us  to-day  in  a  single 
new  Act  which  would  be  what  on  the  Continent  they* 
call  ' '  an  organic  law. ' '  To  protect  it  as  being  final 
or  unalterable  would  be  idle.  Such  a  consolidating 
Act  would  have  to  express  the  constitution  and 
powers  of  the  Central  Imperial  Council  (and  I  can 
imagine  these  to  be  quite  limited  and  few),  the  con- 
stitution and  powers  of  the  national  assemblies,  and, 
I  trust,  a  Senate  of  some  kind,  elective  as  in  France 
and  the  United  States,  the  relative  powers  of 

13 


194  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

National,  County,  and  Municipal  bodies,  the  law  of 
National  and  Local  taxation,  and,  finally,  the  rights, 
obligations,  and  hereditary  succession  of  the  Crown. 
All  this  is  a  big  task ;  but  the  Future  is  rolling  up  with 
imperious  challenges  to  deal  at  least  with  some  of 
them  at  present.  And  real  statesmen  should  consider 
a  systematic  plan  on  which  they  can  all  be  solved  in  a 
form  at  once  practical,  masterly,  and  in  the  spirit  of 
British  traditions. 


These  various  branches  of  a  complete  Constitution 
hang  together,  and  they  cannot  be  treated  independ- 
ently. They  react  on  each  other  and  must  be  re- 
garded as  related  parts  of  a  systematic  whole.  It  is 
a  big  task,  but  not  more  arduous  than  that  of  the 
great  men  who  framed  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States.  I  trust  we  can  find  men  of  foresight  equal  to 
Franklin,  Washington,  Patrick  Henry,  and  their 
colleagues.  Even  in  recent  memory  we  have  seen 
successful  new  Constitutions  evolved  out  of  revolution 
and  war  by  France,  by  Italy,  by  Brazil,  by  Germany, 
Portugal,  Japan,  and  China.  Most  of  our  own  prob- 
lems have  been  more  or  less  treated  and  at  least  pre- 
pared by  various  Commissions,  Councils,  and  volumes 
— e.g.)  the  Imperial  Conference  of  1911,  the 
Speaker's  Conference  on  Devolution,  Lord  Bryce's 
Committee  on  a  Second  Chamber,  the  King's  re- 
markable foundation  of  the  House  of  Windsor  to 
supersede  that  of  Hanover  or  Este;  lastly,  by  such 
books  as  those  of  Sir  W.  Anson,  Mr.  Bagehot,  Mr. 


LAST  WORDS  195 

A.  V.  Dicey,  Lord  Bryce,  and  other  lawyers  of  great 
official  experience.  Every  point  has  been  fully  dis- 
cussed, but  no  action  has  resulted.  All  have  been 
snowed  under  by  the  avalanche  of  unbusiness-like 
business  which  chokes  both  Government  and  Parlia- 
ment. 

The  famous  Act— 12-13  Will :  and  Mary,  1700- 
1701  A.D. — is  commonly  called  the  Act  of  Settlement, 
but  its  settlement  has  been  frequently  amended  and 
revised ;  and  in  its  central  point  it  has  become 
flagrantly  odious  to  our  feelings  to-day.  Of  that 
presently.  But  there  are  incidental  anomalies.  The 
bitter  struggle  which  overthrew  the  Stuarts  of  Roman 
faith  has  long  passed.  Parliament  and  office  are  now 
open  to  all  sects  of  Protestants,  to  Catholics,  to  Jews, 
to  all  forms  of  belief — biblical  or  ethical,  agnostic  or 
materialist.  There  are  millions  of  our  Catholic  fellow- 
subjects  in  England,  Scotland,  Ireland,  Canada, 
Australia,  and  everywhere,  and  it  is  monstrous  to 
exclude  Catholics  from  such  offices  as  that  of  Lord 
Chancellor,  Lord  Keeper,  and  Viceroy  in  Ireland. 
I  would  go  further,  and  wrould  delete  from  the  Act 
the  words  "being  a  Protestant."  What  is  a 
Protestant?  Am  I  a  Protestant?  Certainly,  I  pro- 
test against  citizens  being  excluded  from  public  duty 
in  consequence  of  any  religious  faith  they  hold — or  do 
not  hold.  Not  merely  must  the  Sovereign  "  be  a  Pro- 
testant," but  he  "  must  join  in  communion  with  the 
Church  of  England."  What  about  the  Church  of 
Scotland  ?  This  limitation  in  the  Oath  of  the  Corona- 
tion Ceremony  to  a  religious  body  which  is  but  an 


196  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

infinitesimal  part  of  the  King's  subjects  is  contrary  to 
all  modern  ideas  of  religious  equality,  and,  what  is 
worse,  the  Oath  requires  the  Sovereign  "  to  preserve 
to  the  Bishops  and  clergy  of  the  Churches  committed 
to  their  charge  their  rights  and  privileges."  We 
know  what  trouble  this  Oath  caused  in  the  time  of 
the  Catholic  Emancipation  and  to  Victoria  in  the 
Disestablishment  of  the  Church  of  England  in  Ire- 
land. In  the  imminent  Disestablishment  of  the 
Church  of  England  in  England,  what  is  going  to  be 
done?  In  truth,  much  in  the  Coronation  Ceremony 
and  the  barbaric  rites  copied  from  Byzantine 
Emperors  in  the  tenth  century,  and  certainly  the 
Sectarian  Oath  will  have  to  be  revised. 

»          *          *  *          *  * 

I  come  now  to  the  vital  point — the  Succession  to 
the  Crown.  On  the  childlessness  of  the  Stuart 
Protestants  in  1700  the  Crown  was  limited  to  the 
"  heirs  of  the  body  of  Sophia,  wife  of  the  Elector  of 
Hanover."  There  are  now  dozens  of  such  descend- 
ants in  the  Hohenzollerns,  Tsars,  ex-Empress  of 
Austria,  besides  princelets  in  Germany,  Austria, 
Italy,  and  Spain.  It  would  amuse  a  genealogist  to 
make  a  list  of  the  men  and  women  who  are  ' '  heirs  of 
the  body  of  the  Electress  Sophia,"  most  of  them  un- 
desirables, many  of  them  enemies,  and  some  of  them 
infamous.  It  is  urgent  to  find  a  new  root  for  the  title 
to  our  Throne.  * 


LAST  WORDS  197 

An  obvious  name  is  that  of  Queen  Victoria.  But 
to  that  there  are  three  objections.  It  does  not  free 
us  at  all  from  the  foreign  families,  from  Hohen- 
zollerns  and  some  of  our  worst  enemies  in  German 
dukeries.  It  has  much  of  that  incongruous,  genea- 
logic  jumble  that  attaches  to  the  Electress  Sophia. 
Lastly,  it  belongs  to  the  Victorian  world  that  has 
passed  away.  The  name  of  King  Edward  VII.  also 
brings  in  foreign  royalties  and  it  is  pre-war. 


Now  I  make  bold  to  affirm  that  a  new  settlement  of 
hereditary  right  to  the  Throne  should  be  based  on  our 
honoured  Lord,  King  George  V.  He  represents  to 
the  whole  Empire  the  world- war,  the  new  world,  our 
hopes  of  a  purer  social  order.  The  war  was  the  most 
tremendous  struggle,  the  direst  peril  in  our  history ; 
and  through  it  all  George  was  the  personal  embodi- 
ment of  our  courage,  our  energy,  and  our  faith  in  our 
cause.  Daily  in  ten  thousand  gatherings  rang  out : 
God  save  the  King !  He  is  the  only  one  of  our 
Sovereigns  for  nearly  two  centuries  who  ever  led  our 
armies  in  the  field.  He  was  with  his  men  in  France ; 
he  was  with  his  seamen  in  the  Fleet.  From  the  first 
days  of  August,  1914,  to  the  last  days  of  November, 
1918,  King  George  and  his  family  fought,  worked, 
spoke,  and  lived  as  no  English  King  ever  yet  did. 


I  say  that  it  would  be  a  just  tribute  by  the  nation 
in  memory  of  all  it  owes  to  him  and  to  his  if  King 


198  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

George  were  officially  enacted  as  the  source  of  a  new 
dynasty.  With  admirable  judgment  he  has  himself 
cast  off  all  outlandish  family  names,  has  called  his 
own  the  House  of  Windsor,  and  his  collaterals  by 
familiar  English  place-names.  Let  Parliament,  then, 
cast  off  outlandish  princes  as  having  any  claim  to  the 
blood-royal  of  England.  Not  only  has  the  war  given 
to  King  George  a  part  that  has  never  been  filled  by 
any  king  since  the  Conquest,  but  his  personal  record 
as  a  devoted  public  servant  and  truly  good  man  stands 
above  them  all.  I  am  no  courtier  and  I  know  no  more 
of  Courts  than  the  man  in  the  street ;  but  as  an  his- 
torian I  can  recall  no  other  English  king  since  Alfred 
who  was  stainless  in  every  phase  of  public  duty  and 
domestic  life,  who  was  in  every  aspect  of  kingship  all 
that  should  be  the  real  Head  of  the  State  and  the  first 
gentleman  in  England. 


And  we  have  the  same  hopes  in  his  family  for  the 
future.  No  Prince,  neither  Richard  the  Crusader, 
nor  Harry  of  Monmouth,  nor  Harry  Tudor,  ever 
brought  royalty  home  to  the  Britons  at  home  and 
overseas  as  does  our  popular  Prince  of  Wales.  His 
personality  and  his  ubiquity  have  illuminated  the  in- 
stitution of  princedom  and  have  knit  up  the  Empire  as 
nothing  before  has  done.  Burke  said  John  Howard 
had  "  made  a  circumnavigation  of  charity."  The 
Prince  makes  circumnavigations  of  English  manhood. 
Like  his  father — soldier,  seaman,  sportsman,  student, 
speaker,  hard  worker,  "  good  fellow  " — he  goes 


LAST  WORDS  199 

round  the  world  showing  it  what  the  best  type  of 
young  Englishman  is,  as  no  Prince  before  ever  did  or 
could  do. 

There  are  some  functions  of  kingship  which  should 
be  amended  in  any  new  Act  of  Settlement.  We  trust 
that  the  odious  appendage  of  Emperor  will  be  deleted 
from  the  King's  title.  It  was  one  of  Disraeli's 
Arabian  Nights,  as  we  now  know  disliked  by  Victoria 
and  Edward.  The  war  has  seen  the  disappearance  of 
four  mighty  Empires.  It  was  their  Imperial  char- 
acter which  was  their  ruin.  Let  us  cast  out  that  word 
of  evil  omen.  The  oligarchy  under  the  Hanoverian 
kings  sought  to  make  them  their  tools,  deprived  the 
Throne  of  power,  and  were  afraid  of  royal  favourites. 
There  is  one  function  that  should  be  restored  in  prac- 
tice to  the  King.  He  is  "  the  fountain  of  honour," 
and  all  honours,  titles,  honorific  offices  in  Court  should 
be  placed  absolutely  in  his  own  gift,  to  the  exclusion 
of  any  Minister.  So  we  might  get  rid  of  the  scanda- 
lous sale  of  titles,  the  exclusion  of  rivals,  the  personal 
intrigues,  and  all  the  dirty  secrets  of  a  Prime 
Minister's  office  box.  If  "  honours  "  there  have  to 
be,  I  would  rather  trust  a  King  than  a  Minister.  At 
the  same  time,  a  pompous  apparatus  of  forms  and 
etiquette  could  be  got  rid  of — mediaeval  and  even 
Victorian  rules  about  standing,  kneeling,  kissing 
hands,  chamberlain's  gymnastics,  and  dragging 
harassed,  sick,  exhausted  Ministers  to  Balmoral,  in  a 
crisis.  And  with  this,  the  Prime  Minister's  daily 
letter  to  the  Sovereign,  as  seen  in  the  Lives  of  Glad- 
stone and  Beaconsfield.  The  King,  as  of  old,  should 


200  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

be  authorised  to  sit  in  a  Cabinet  Council,  not  as  Chair- 
man, nor  as  a  member,  but  to  understand  questions 
of  special  moment.  I  would  even  allow  him  to  listen 
in  silence  to  debates  in  either  House.  He  should  be 
recognised  as  the  true  ' '  Patriot  King  ' ' — and  this 
George  V.  is  and  will  be. 


But  there  is  something  farther,  and  I  cannot  with- 
hold my  conviction  that  the  monarchic  principle  is 
itself  deeply  shaken.  Four  mighty  Empires  crashed 
for  ever  during  five  years  of  war ;  the  Brazilian  and  the 
Chinese  some  years  earlier.  But  over  the  civilised 
world  republics  have  been  taking  the  place  of 
monarchies.  When  I  was  at  school  the  only  republic 
in  Europe  was  the  Swiss.  There  are  now  about  a 
dozen,  covering  two-thirds  of  the  whole  continent. 
Except  our  own,  the  only  Thrones  of  the  larger  States 
are  those  of  Italy  and  Spain ;  and  neither  promises 
much  support  to  the  monarchic  principle.  For 
half  a  century  republics  have  been  supplanting 
monarchies.  The  war,  chaos,  and  the  New  Order 
have  created  a  landslide  in  favour  of  democratic 
republics.  No  one  can  count  on  there  being  any  kings 
left  at  the  end  of  the  century.  When  you  once  have 
accepted  unlimited  democracy,  the  inevitable  step  is 
the  Republic. 


Now  there  are  in  the  United  Kingdom  two  main 
aspects  to  the  monarchic  problem.      The  first  is  the 


LAST  WORDS  201 

noble  stimulus  to  patriotism,  self-devotion,  and 
national  union  which  is  given  by  loyalty  and  honour 
for  our  King  as  embodying  the  peoples  of  our  race. 
It  is  said  that  with  some  of  our  overseas  compatriots 
faith  in  King  and  Prince  is  the  one  remaining  bond 
of  union ;  and  in  Canada,  New  Zealand,  India,  it  is  a 
governing  link  of  incalculable  power.  Against  this 
must  be  put  the  fact  that  the  republican  idea  is  deep- 
set  in  Ireland,  in  parts  of  Scotland,  in  the  north  and 
centre  of  England,  in  Australia,  in  South  Africa,  and 
even  in  London  blazes  out  with  revolutionary  violence 
such  as  Cabinets  and  Parliaments  prefer  to  ignore 
rather  than  to  crush.  It  is  in  vain  to  treat  this  as 
merely  the  explosion  of  ' '  extremists . ' '  Behind  them 
there  is  in  the  democracy  a  deep,  widespread,  in- 
domitable faith  in  the  republic  as  the  normal  form  of 
the  State  in  all  three  Kingdoms  and  Overseas. 


I  believe  that  both  sides  of  this  problem  of 
Monarchy  could  be  met,  if  in  any  re-settlement  of  the 
Constitution  our  country  were  frankly  to  be  styled 
the  Commonwealth,  or  Union  of  Commonwealths, 
which  it  is,  and  George  V.  and  his  successors  were  to 
be  styled  their  Hereditary  Chief.  The  historic  halo 
and  romantic  traditions  which  gather  round  our  Royal 
House  are  priceless  and  irreplaceable.  No  country 
has  such  a  record  in  the  thousand  years  since  Alfred ; 
and  it  would  be  brutal  to  cast  it  away  when  its  flame 
never  burned  so  bright  and  so  pure.  For  two  centuries 
the  Republic  of  Holland  owed  allegiance  to  the 


202  NOVISSIMA  VERBA 

dynasty  of  their  glorious  Founder,  William  the 
Silent,  as  their  hereditary  Head.  Our  dynasty  has  a 
longer  and  a  more  splendid  story  to  record.  If 
democracy,  as  seems  inevitable,  will  not  stand  kings, 
the  invaluable  traditions  of  loyalty  might  yet  be  pre- 
served in  a  Royal  House.  The  style  of  our  Head  in 
any  new  Act  of  Settlement  would  be  : 

Hereditary  Chief  of  the  United  Commonwealths. 


A  word  as  to  each  part  of  this  title.  President  is  a 
temporary  and  bourgeois  office ;  and,  except  in 
U.S.A.,  with  no  traditions  or  glamour  about  it  at  all. 
Hereditary  Chief  is  a  title  well  known  in  Scotland,  in 
Africa,  in  India.  Commonwealth  is  a  fine  old  Eng- 
lish word,  and  is  free  from  associations  with  Latin  and 
French  republics.  The  plural  Commonwealths  would 
remind  men  of  the  many  nations  in  these  islands  and 
of  overseas  nations  who  join  under  the  same  flag.  We 
might  avoid  the  name  British,  which,  even  more  than 
English,  may  meet  racial  antipathies  in  Ireland,  as 
English  or  Saxon  would  do  in  Scotland  and  in  Wales ; 
and  British  may  have  an  irritating  sound  in  Australia, 
in  South  Africa,  in  India.  "  United  Common- 
wealths "  raises  no  question  of  race,  and  suggests  no 
race  predominance  or  national  precedency.  The 
twentieth  century  will  see  the  end  of  feudal  institu- 
tions, let  us  hope  by  a  peaceful  evolution  into  far 
broader  social  institutions.  The  Crown  is  a  typical 
institution  of  feudalism,  as  much  in  its  chivalrous  side 


LAST  WORDS  208 

as  in  its  oppressive  side.  And  whenever  the  passion 
for  the  republican  ideal,  which  now  moves  civilised 
man  from  China  to  Peru,  shall  force  Englishmen  to 
join  with  all  others  of  English  speech,  it  may  be 
possible  to  preserve  and  even  to  increase  the  prestige 
of  a  Royal  House — and  all  its  incalculable  influence 
for  good. 


INDEX 


Absolute,  the,  21,  166-168. 

Agamemnon^  the,  by  Professor 
G.  G.  Murray,  160-161. 

Allison,  Sir  Robert,  Lucre- 
tius, 52-53. 

American  Republic,  9-11,  23, 
51,  57,  83-85,  118-120,  143. 

Anthology,  Greek,  19-20. 

Armenia,  85-87,   120,  144. 

Armistice,  the,  13,  23,  138. 

Assonance,  in  verse,  36-39. 


Balfour,    Mr.    A.    J.,    87,    142, 

165. 
Bolshevism,  9,   18,   26,   59,    128- 

134,  147-149. 
Bosanquet,    Dr.,    on    religion, 

163-165. 

Bradlaugh,   Charles,  96-97. 
Bryce,  Viscount,   122,  194-195 
Bureaucracy,  179,  182. 
Bury,  Prof.  J.  B.,  on  Progress, 

71-77,  106. 
Byzantine  Empire,  62-63. 


Clynes,  J.,  M.P.,  58,  59. 

Conference,    Paris,   14,   56-57. 

Conventions,    American,    118. 

Cook,  Sir  Edward,  19-20. 

Covenant,  the,  10,  22-23,  84-86, 
140-141,  145. 

Comte,  Auguste,  71,  74-76,  91, 
94,  106-111. 

Constitution,  Reform  of,  135- 
136,  150-152,  187-203. 

Courtney,  Lord,  Life  of,  153- 
156. 

Courtney,  Mrs.  W.  L.,  Free- 
thinkers, 95-98. 

Cox,  Harold,  115-117. 

Crown,  the,  188-203. 


D 

Darwin,  Charles,  71. 

Devolution,  of  Parliament, 
122. 

Deschanel,  Paul,  Life  of  Gam- 
betta,  101-106. 

Diehl,  Charles,  Byzantine  Em- 
pire, 62-63. 

"  Direct  Action,"  126-130,  149. 


C  E 

Calendar   of   Great  Men,   the,  Economic  Consequences,  40-45. 

64.  Edward  VII,  King,  197. 

Capitalism,  91-94,    126-134.  Einstein,   Prof.,  20-21,  165-168. 

Chancellor,   the  Lord,   69-70.  Eliot,  George,   15-16. 

Churches,    Future  of,    19,    131-  Emmott,    Lord,    on    National- 


134,  161-166. 
Clemenceau,  G.,  11. 


isation,  177-179. 
Empires,  End  of,   199-203. 


205 


INDEX 


France,  101-106,  169-177. 
Frederick  the  Great,  15. 


Gambetta,  Life  of,  101-106. 
George  V,  King,  197-198. 
George,  see  Lloyd  George,  197, 
200-201. 


League  of  Nations,  9,  23-24, 
45-46,  57,  83-87,  137-140,  144- 
145. 

Liberty,  Economic,  by  Harold 
Cox,  115-117. 

Lloyd-George,  11,  56,  141-143. 

Lodge,  Sir  Oliver,  20. 

Lucretius,  52,   53. 

M 

Mandates,  the,  83,  87,  120-121, 

144. 

Marvin,  F.  S.,  Century  of 
Hope,  54-55. 

European   Thought, 

112-115. 

Marx,   Karl,  93. 
Millerand,   M.,  169-174. 
Harrison,      Frederic,      Obiter      Milman,  Dean,  111,  161. 

Scripta,  9,  Memoirs,  57.  Monarchy,  the,  201-203. 

Home  Rule,  184,  187.  Morley,  Lord,  52. 

Hospitals,  Future  of,  130-134.       Murray,  Prof.  G.  G.,  on  Aga- 
Huxley,    Prof.    T.,    96-97,    109-         memnon,  160-161. 

on  Sophocles  and  Euri- 


Courtney,  113,  153-156. 
Grant-Duff,  Poem  by,  27. 
Grey,  Viscount,  122. 


H 

Hardy,  Thomas,  27-34. 


110. 


pides,   160. 


Industrialism,  17. 
Inge,  Dean,  14-19,  106-111. 
Ireland,     60-62,     142-143,     182- 
186. 


N 


Nations,  League  of,  see  League. 
Nationalisation,    116-117,    177- 

179. 
New  Poor,  the,  69,  130-132. 


James,   Henry,  Letters  of,   77- 
82. 


Kautsky,  Karl,  25-27. 
Keynes,   Maynard,   40-45. 


Labour     Party,     24-25,     58-60, 

125-130,  141-144. 
Law  Reform,  69-70. 


Obiter  Scripta,  1919,  9,  146. 
Obscurantism,  165. 
Ochlocracy,  Athenian,   180. 


Palestine,   87-90,   142. 
Parliament,    Reform    of,    122, 

135,  189-195. 
Philosophy,    English,    History 

of,  156-159. 

Poland,  Future  of,  48-49. 
Positivism,  21,  111,  167,  168. 


INDEX  207 

Progress,    Idea   of,    71-77,    106-     Treaty    of    Peace,    40-45,    135- 

111.  137,  139. 

Proletariate,    dictatorship    of,      Triumvirate,  our,  139. 

128. 

Property,  Law  of,  69-70. 
Prince,  of  Wales,  196.  U 

United    States,    see    America, 
R  Wilson,  &c. 

Relativity,    Theory    of,    20-21, 

166-168.  v 

Roland,   Chanson  de,  34-37. 
Romanes  Lecture,  the,  106-112.      Victoria,  Queen,  197,  199. 

Victorian  Era,  the,  95-98,  179- 

S  181- 

Sappho,   64-67.  w 

Sarolea,  Charles,  46-50. 

Scott-Moncrieff,  Roland,  34-39.  Way,   Dr.   A.    S.,   on   Sappho, 

Settlement,  Act  of,  195-203.  64-67. 

Soviets,   the,  24,   125-130.  Wales,  Prince  of,  198. 

Sorley,  Dr.  W.  R.,  History  of  Ward,  Mrs.  Humphry,  94-95. 

Philosophy,  156-159.  Webb,   Mr.   and  Mrs.   Sidney, 

Social,  Order,  a  new,  9,  68-69,  122-125. 

146-148  West,    Sir  Algernon,    Contem- 

Socialism,  9,   24,  59,   125-130.  porary  Portraits,  179-182. 

Speaker,    The,    Mr.    Lowther,  Wilson,  Woodrow,  10-14,  50-51, 

122.  57-58. 

Spencer,     Herbert,     71,     76-77,  Withers,  Hartley,  on  Capital- 

90-91.  ism,  91-94. 
Stephen,  Sir  Leslie,  96-98. 
Strachey,  Mr.  Lytton,  95-96. 

Y 

T  Young,  Norwood,  on  Frederick 

Trades    Unions,     History    of,         th«  Great,  15. 
122-125. 

Growth  of,  122-130.  „ 

Criticism     of,     125-134, 

148-149.  Zionism,  see  Palestine. 


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